THE NEW YORK TIMES – EDITORIAL: Nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there is still a seemingly limitless stream of cash flowing to terrorist groups from private charities and contributors in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. According to classified State Department cables recently released by WikiLeaks, governments in all three countries — all close American allies — are not doing enough to shut down that flow of money.
In a December 2009 cable to American diplomats in the region, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warns that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and says that persuading Saudi leaders to treat this as a priority is “an ongoing challenge.”
The cable also said that while the Saudi government has taken important steps to criminalize terror financing and restrict the movement of money overseas, it still looks the other way when it comes to certain favored organizations. Fund-raising at pilgrimages to Mecca is believed to produce millions of dollars annually for extremists. The cable suggests an even more serious problem in Kuwait, where Islamic charities are largely unregulated. The three gulf states are also not doing enough to disrupt crimes, including drug trafficking and kidnappings for ransom, that produce revenue for terrorists. After Sept. 11, Saudi Arabia turned a blind eye to the terrorist threat even though Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi-born. >>> | Wednesday, December 08, 2010
