So, How Do We Stop The Terrorists?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, The WorldI think it’s about cutting off the money. You stop the money flowing in and they won’t be able to pay anybody’s family to blow themselves up. However, when were only talking about thousands of dollars here and there, that can be a very tall order.
The Counterterrorism Blog has a couple ideas. The first is targeting recruitment centers:
It should not be that difficult to identify European centers used for radical Jihad indoctrination and recruitment. They are well established in Europe, and most are already well known to local authorities. While our democratic societies must remain dedicated to protecting religious freedom and to respecting ethnic sensitivities and diversity, we should be able, by now, to make the distinction between fundamentalist religious proselytizing and teaching on the one hand, and recruitment for hatred, violence and terrorism on the other. We can no longer tolerate the preaching to violence by the likes of Abu Hamza al-Masri or Omar Bakri Mohammed..
The second is, as I mentioned, stopping the flow of money to those who would bend religion for their own wicked purposes:
The second fixed pillar is the deep pockets that continue to finance, not just the terrorists and their operations, but the whole process of indoctrination, recruitment, organization and training of committed violent Jihadists. A number of these terrorist financiers have already been identified. Many still remain unknown. Most are motivated by strong, if misdirected, religious convictions, or by a sense of revenge or hatred for Western culture, actions or policies. But, we have done so very little to dissuade them from supporting such movements or to punish them for doing so. Just take a look at what little effect UN designation as Taliban and Al Qaeda financial supporters has had on those identified individuals, and how easy it has been for them to circumvent the sanctions that are supposed to accompany such designation. See my February 22nd Blog “What Value UN Designation?” Let’s hope that Gordon Brown’s calls are heeded and that Europe, the United States, the United Nations and the international community at large now takes the appropriate steps to put new teeth into these counter terrorism efforts.
By the way, I highly recommend subscribing to The Counterterrorism Blog by pulling this link into your newsreader. They definitely know their stuff.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
