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Expanding anti-terror collaboration

By an interesting co-incidence, the world is beginning to learn about the intricate, complex and wide-ranging nature of global terrorism and its support networks at a time when the US is gearing for military action against groups based in Afghanistan which it suspects are responsible for the September 11 devastation against the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The news report from our correspondent in Los Angeles which we front paged yesterday, on the close collaboration between worldwide crime syndicates and terror organisations should have proved more than an eye-opener for governments, law enforcement agencies and defence establishments. Apparently, the present level of knowledge of terror groups, their funding sources and modes of operation are no more than the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

It could be gathered that terror groups do not only collaborate closely with each other but are also hand-in-glove with far-flung crime syndicates which provide the terror networks with the required financial sustenance, sometimes running into US $900 billion a year. It is quite some time since disclosures were made of the LTTE's narco-terror links. Hard drugs are smuggled worldwide by LTTE crime syndicates for the purpose of raising funds for the wasteful separatist war. These funds are regularly laundered and pass off undetected. They are, for instance, invested in banks and stock markets. Once this blood money assumes these respectable guises, it goes without saying that detection proves arduously difficult.

The task of hand, then is to undermine and possibly cripple these deeply entrenched and mutually-supportive terror and crime syndicates which operate on a global scale. Needless to say, governments and law-and-order agencies need to collaborate very closely and concertedly to wreck this evil system which is costing them very dearly.

This is a daunting challenge which requires counter-intelligence operations of a very effective and ambitions nature. The US and British governments have done well to short-list the terror groups which should be constantly watched and hunted but current disclosures on the scope and dimensions of global terror necessitate a worldwide, collaborative effort to blunt the edge of terror. We need to go behind appearances and guises if the different segments in terror networks are to be detected and neutralized. Containing LTTE terror, for instance, will require a sustained effort to bust its funding sources. Law enforcers will be called on to not only identify the avert financial supporters of LTTE terror but to also detect the front organisations and covert collaborators of the group which play a principal role in money laundering, for instance.

The US, in a timely response to these challenges has circulated a new anti-terrorism resolution among some key UN Security Council members, targeting in particular, clandestine funding sources of terror organisations. The resolution also deals with collaborative measures such as immigration, extradition and information exchanges among governments.

While these arrangements are likely to balance the military option they should operate in a sustained, vigorous and efficient fashion if the necessary results are to be reaped. Most importantly, such security collaboration has to be pervasive, penetrative and truly global in scope.

• Editorial of  The Observer - 27.9.2001:
  Western war winds shake economy

• Voice of the Sinhala and Tamil Media
  Editorials from Sinhala and Tamil Newspapers
  of 27.9.2001

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