Is al-Qaeda running out of money?
Matthew Levitt, writing in the West Point counterterrorism review, Sentinel, notes that donations to al-Qaeda ain't what they used to be.
Speaking before congress in February, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell commented that during the previous 12-18 months the intelligence community noticed that “al Qaeda has had difficulty in raising funds and sustaining themselves.”
The question is why. And the answers are several.
Three straightforward reasons for al-Qaeda's financial decline are the crackdown on "charitable" organization, pressure on major individual donors and the disruption of their networks.
In his July 2005 letter to Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri humbly asked the leader of al-Qa`ida in Iraq if he could spare “a payment of approximately one hundred thousand” because “many of the lines have been cut off.
Would al-Qaeda have been reduced to dire straits if their attacks had continued, unanswered, across the world?
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