Terror Finances Disrupting Threat Finances

Terror Finances Disrupting Threat Finances This document, authored by Major Wesley J.L. Anderson (2008) for the Joint Special Operations University, examines in extensive detail the issue of funding terrorism and the mechanisms that exist for disrupting terrorist organizations' funding and thus their activities. Anderson (2008) notes the similarities between terrorist organizations and other criminal organizations, especially their essential quest for money and the ability to trace funds as they enter the organization.

By exploring both the general mechanisms of funding terrorism and some of the concrete details of current funding sources, Anderson (2008) makes both the importance of this funding and some of the means by which it can be disrupted quite clear early on in the document. A variety of organizations, both attached to the U.S. government and internationally overseen, have been charged with tracking and disrupting terrorist funding, with these international organizations of great importance due to the international nature of funding networks and terrorist organizations themselves (Anderson, 2008).

These organizations meet with significant successes, though legal implications and practical difficulties make the goal of truly disrupting all sources of terrorist funding eternally elusive (Anderson, 2008). Recommendations for further means of more effectively tracking and disrupting terrorist funding are also given, and an extensive appendix provides abundant concrete detail as to current programs and efforts underway in limiting the money supply the world's terrorist organizations are able to rely upon (Anderson, 2008).

Disrupting terroists' financing means disrupting terrorist activities, and is thus in direct furtherance of primary national and international security goals (Anderson, 2008). Importance Disrupting the financing of terrorist activities and organizations and breaking up the networks that provide such financing is immensely important in the overall fight against terrorism and an effort to maintain international and national security (Anderson, 2008).

The extensive list of financing mechanisms given in Appendix B of the document makes it clear that terrorist organizations are adept at finding and exploiting weaknesses in international security and in developing complex systems to achieve their ends, including the taking in of finances (Anderson, 2008).

A disruption of terrorist organizations' financing activities not only directly inhibits their ability to carry out terrorist actions but also disrupts the support networks these organizations form in other ways, hurting their image and the degree of popular support they are able to generate in the countries and regions in which they operate (Anderson, 2008). In.