EDITORIAL — Financiers of terror

If the government is serious about improving the security situation, it should start taking a closer look at the operations of certain foundations and charity organizations. Enterprises registered as charitable arms are among the least regulated in this country, enjoying a lot of room in fund-raising activities.

Little wonder then than gambling barons and other organized crime bosses, rebels and terrorists have long used charity foundations to launder money and funnel funds. Shortly after the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, security officials tagged a charity organization operating in Mindanao as a conduit for funds from Osama bin Laden to the Abu Sayyaf. Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who ran the charity foundation, eventually left the Philippines and was next heard from in Saudi Arabia, where he denied financing terrorist activities.

Recently, the US Treasury Department tagged the Philippine and Indonesian branches of a Saudi-based charity group, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IRRO), as a conduit for funds from Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network to the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist groups. The report elicited a promise from the Saudis to crack down on terror financiers based in their country.

That is easier said than done. The United States and other countries at the forefront of the war on terror have long harbored ambivalent feelings about the extent of support extended by Riyadh to Islamist extremists. The Saudi rulers have been dispensing petrodollars around the globe to spread the kingdom’s fundamentalist form of Islam, which has evolved from Wahhabism to Salafism. There are debates on how much the fundamentalist movement has influenced Islamic extremism.

Many Islamic charities have undoubtedly contributed to the development of Muslim communities around the globe. But there are also groups that willfully finance terrorist activities. The government must improve its capability to regulate charity organizations and ferret out the financiers of terror.