Terror author: Follow the funding

By CHERY SABOL

Italian scholar says replica groups make threat worse today than before 9/11 attacks

The Daily Inter Lake

An international expert on terrorism funding spoke Thursday in Kalispell as news of a terrorist plot to blow up London planes bound for the United States was revealed worldwide.

Loretta Napoleoni, born and raised in Italy, is a part-time resident on Whitefish Lake with a doctorate in economics. She spoke at a Kalispell Rotary meeting about the evolution of funding behind terrorist activities and the money that motivates groups to do what they do.

She wrote Terror Inc, which says terrorism turns over $1.5 trillion every year.

It has all changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. That was a $500,000 plot, Napoleoni said.

Since then, acts such as the 2005 bombings in Madrid and London have been self-funded and cost less than $2,000 in the latter case.

Anybody can do it, Napoleoni said. The psychological effect is the same, whether an act of terrorism kills thousands or only a few people.

What motivates those acts is not religion or politics, but economics, she said.

Her research began in Italy in the 1980s when she was allowed to interview members of the Red Brigades. One of her best friends had become a terrorist with the group.

A Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University and a Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics, Napoleoni sought funding to research terrorism in 1998 and 1999. She was told, Terrorism is a dead issue.

She eventually found some funding from professionals in the United Kingdom. Everything changed a couple of years later.

On Sept. 12, 2001, I must have received 500 phone calls about her research, she said.

Globalized terrorism developed in the 1990s with the opening of economic and financial barriers in the world, she said. Before that, state-sponsored terrorism and the privatization of terrorism had funded local attacks. Al-Qaida had a rich international funding portfolio that allowed it to carry out attacks in more than one country, Napoleoni she said.

That organization was destroyed after Sept. 11, 2001, she said. In its place has cropped up smaller, home-grown replica groups that carry out independent attacks, she said.

The situation today is, unfortunately, much worse than it was on the 10th of September, 2001, Napoleoni said.

The old axiom of following the money no longer works, because the money is fragmented now, she said.

We have to go to the root causes and understand why this is happening, she said of terrorism.

That means reforming foreign policy and relationships with Muslim people, not only in foreign countries, but also in the United States, she said.

Hatred for the United States is created by situations not caused by American people, but by what government is doing, she said.

For example, Jordan is a close U.S. ally in the Middle East. But in Jordan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was tortured in prison before he met Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders and joined their cause.

We should say no to this. No human being should be subjected to that, surely not in our name, Napoleoni said.

She compares radical Muslims to the Christians at the time of the Crusades. Although both seem to be driven by religious tenets, they actually are motivated by simple survival.

They want jobs, a family, a home, she said.

Religion is the recruitment tool for economic ends, Napoleoni said.

If you have absolutely nothing in your life, then you believe anything to justify why you re here, Napoleoni said. Suicide bombers, starving and struggling in the Middle East, are easy targets with a promise of heaven.

Napoleoni believes that going after Iraq was a tremendous mistake. Iraq had nothing to do with international terrorism, she said.

The focus should have been on finding terrorist-in-chief Osama bin Laden instead, she said. After Sept. 11, he was simply a novelty in most of the world. Now, he has become an icon that inspires knockoff sects of terrorists.

If we had destroyed Osama bin Laden, we wouldn t be here discussing this and I wouldn t be writing these books, Napoleoni said.

Asked by Rotarians what she suggests, Napoleoni said that pacifying the Middle East is going to require making a deal with Iran.

That country was willing to talk with the United States recently, for the first time since 1978. Talks failed and then hostilities erupted between Israel and Palestine, she said.

If the United States is not going to take a leadership role in the Middle East, then we should get out, instead of being manipulated, Napoleoni said.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com.