Apparently, Hamas is finding it difficult to get a bank that will deal with them. M. Simon's response:
"That is interesting. The Islamics have pretty much shut down Western newspapers through the cartoon jihad. We have eliminated their cash flow (in places) through the money jihad. I'd put it down to lack of strategic thinking on the part of the Islamics.
See also my previous articles on jihadi money flow problems in Follow the Money and Follow the Gold."
Iran is working to step into the breach with $50 million, of course, since Hamas shares its goal of genocide against the Jews. Meanwhile, Hamas is calling for Arab help - truth is, $50 million doesn't go as far as it used to. Especially when you need to pay off your own supporters with jobs, and keep the Fatah people paid on some level so they don't take up arms. Qatar has also pledged $50 million... but the same article notes that despite promises to give the authority $55 million a month, Arab nations have not given any money since the Hamas election victory. apparently, it's due to a combination of their own wariness about Hamas, and US pressure.
The goal of all these efforts is to replace about $1 billion in aid from the West, plus the $55 million per month in taxes whose transfer has been halted by the state they do not recognize (seems fair - a state that doesn't exist can't gve you money). Yet throughout, the banking problem remains. Asking Arabs to give Hamas money for deposit in Persian banks isn't going to generate wild enthusiasm, so it will be fascinating to see how that one resolves.
Keep the tension on - it helps to keep the tension on.
Around the first of the year there were reports from various Swiss and other Western banks of substantial withdrawals of Iranian assets (which was adamantly denied by the Iranians but they would, wouldn't they?). It's interesting to consider these things together.
It is tempting to try to build this into a plank of economic warfare against Iran (and other Islamist states) and bleed them dry propping up their various causes.
Unfortunately, I am a bit pessimistic since, long term, it is our own appetite for hydrocarbons that infuses them with cash in the first place. And while I applaud the Administration for its sudden (and long overdo) realization that economic warfare of the sort we'd like to conduct requires us to reduce or eliminate our reliance on middle eastern oil... I think it will be a decade or more before that will take effect.
And by that time, Iran or its ideological successor will be playing the China or the India card against us, as they will still be reliant on middle eastern oil.
It is very frustrating.
Not to mention that Arab govs are great at promising the sky and delivering peanuts. I would wager that that 55+50million promise will be lucky to be delivered in the 20million combined range, LUcky.
I dont see why many still say we should give them humanitarian aid food and such either. How will people ever be driven to force thier leaders one way or another to do the right thing if thier is no consequences. Even better how will the leadership ever be forced into doing the right thing when the care of thier people is done by someone else.
Pure retardation on our part. You dont reward bad behavior and unfortunatley some tough love often goes along way to correcting imature attitudes.
"Starve the Beast" comes to mind.
$50 million would mean some guy might have to give up his private jet- hey, it is a start.
To put in perspective. The “Follow the Gold” link says they have 140,000 workers, which works out to about $360 per worker.
...plus, if Iran pays, it has the added benefit of draining THEIR resources, not ours, especially in the event of a confrontation.
This is interesting. Wars used to be simple head-on, symmetrical fights. America did well in WW2 largely due to the vast numbers of war machines and troops the US could produce.
Now, War is aymmetrical in both directions.
They conduct terror on us that is very difficult and costly to prevent, but we can fray the edges of their ideology through things like cartoons and banking freezes, which are easy for us to do.,
Wanna be cruel. Encourage the Arabs to provide aid but leave the admininstration to Arab entrepreneurs selected by the Arab governments.
90% of the money will never reach Hamas.
Thanks Joe.
BTW Cash Flow Jihad has a really nice ring. And it flows well with Cartoon Jihad.
Brilliant.
Want to bet that the UN will come up with a solution? Include a commission of course.
I would love to see a detailed accounting / economic analysis of the cost of assymetric warfare (aka terrorism). I would wager that there are some very interesting surprises within those costs. Perhaps publishing how much money is actually funneled to corrupt officials and not to "the cause" would help enlighten the foot soldiers about how easily their "holy cause" is being co-opted.
McA: triple "heh".
" Perhaps publishing how much money is actually funneled to corrupt officials and not to "the cause" would help enlighten the foot soldiers about how easily their "holy cause" is being co-opted."
I believe I read that under Arafat, the Palis received the highest (non-military) aid per capita in the world. And yet, poverty remained. Why? It was due in large part to the fact that a lot of that money ended up in Arafat's pockets:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/07/60minutes/main582487.shtml
Your comment posting device will not allow posts that list URLs from Blogger weblogs-- it claims part of the url is "part of a string used by a previous spammer". (It would not let me list my (Blogger) url in the previous post-- however, I am submitting this having changed the url fropm a Blogger=type url to a "Tiny Url").