June 20, 2007:
One reason there is no shortage of
suicide bombers is because of the money involved. Several Islamic charities
provide one time payments, or even monthly "pensions," to the families of
suicide bombers. Saddam Hussein is still popular among Islamic radicals
because, when he was in power, he made large (up to $30,000) payments to the
families of such "martyrs." That made recruiting a lot easier, and took the PR
sting out of the loss of life. Saddam is no longer writing checks, but there are several other sources that are
still active.
For the last seven years, the United States, and
other governments, have been tracking down the organizations that still make
these payments, and shut many of them down. In the process of doing that, many
of these "charities" (their usual cover) were observed funneling money to
terrorists themselves. For a while, some of the charities were identified, but
not approached, so that the movement of the payments, usually via Middle
Eastern banks, could be tracked to the recipient. That would result in the
identification, and sometimes capture, of terrorists.
Some of these efforts have been upset because of
civil suits, by terrorism victims (or their families) against the Middle
Eastern banks that deliver the martyr money to the recipients. Many of those
banks have branches in the United States, and that allows plaintiffs to force
the banks to reveal transactions from the Islamic charities that are being
sued, even if those charities are no longer in business. The banks can then be
sued, if the plaintiffs can prove bank management knew who they were dealing
with. Since the data uncovered during these proceedings is not classified, and
done openly, it scares away any terrorists who were being monitored by
intelligence operations. Of course, the CIA or FBI (or any other intel
organization) rarely complains, since this would further compromise the
surveillance operation. This is one of the reasons that governments discourage
these lawsuits, although they don't like to make too much of an issue of the
intel angle, but it's there.