"Cut off al Qaeda from Its Financial Sources"

The Al Qaeda network still has no major problems securing new funds for its activities. Michael Chandler, the former head of a United Nations al Qaeda monitoring panel, says the organisation must be cut off from its financial sources. Hardy Graupner reports

Earlier this year, the UN Security Council quietly dissolved a high profile independent monitoring group led by Michael Chandler of Britain which was set up two and a half years ago to monitor al Qaeda's financial dealings and the network's involvement in arms smuggling.

During a visit to Berlin, Mr Chandler urged the international community to redouble their efforts to cut off al Qaeda terrorists from its old and new financial sources.

The panel delivered a series of stinging reports on the failure of many nations to observe sanctions against the terrorist groups affiliated in some way to Osama bin Laden. Talking to DW Radio in Berlin, Michael Chandler left uncommented allegations that his panel was dissolved due to intervention by influential UN members which had been singled out for failure to take adequate measures to combat al Qaeda.

Terrorist network has lost little of its strength

He did make it clear, though, that the international community, including western nations, had every reason to step up their efforts to fight the terrorist network which he believed had lost little of its strength despite the clampdown on the Taleban in Afghanistan:

"Al Qaeda has changed again and we have seen what we refer to as the third generation coming along, we have seen that there may be coming along some involvement from people who are copycatting likeminded something like that", Mr Chandler said.

"There is this guy al Al Zarqawi who is still at loose, who has strong connections to al Qaeda and his name keeps popping up. Not just because of what he is meant to have done in Jordan but with relation to some events in Iraq and with events now in Europe his name appears", Chandler said. "This organisation is self-perpetuating and it is still around in a new form."

Chandler is particularly concerned about the international community's inability to stop al Qaeda from securing large-scale funding for its terrorist activities around the globe.

Terrorists travel abroad at free will

He says the network continues to receive funds from different sources as well as explosives and arms, and is able to have some of its people move around at will.

"This organization was well organized, long before Sept. 11. They had the flexibility and they had worked out different methods so that they could continue to operate to survive because they knew that there would be some quite dramatic reaction. They had already seen that there were requirements to deal with funds belonging to the Taleban, so this was not new", Chandler asserts.

"All the indications from whatever information that is coming in, they have diversified. Even cash was found in one of the raids in Riad. Large sums of cash. The drug crop in Afghanistan, huge, millions and billions of dollars, not all of that is going to al Qaeda, but enough of that is there to keep the Taleban going and to keep the al Qaeda element who are still somewhere in that belt along the border with Pakistan."

Referring to the latest taped message from what appears to be the real bin Laden, Michael Chandler believes that al Qaeda's strategy to drive a wedge between the coalition forces won't succeed despite the withdrawal of Spanish and Honduran troops from Iraq.

"I don't think so, it is a good try but they may be getting too confident in their thinking because of what happened in Madrid, but it is a clever move and it shows that bin Laden or the person who, let's say it is him, is continuing to keep abreast of what is going on and trying to stay in the picture."

The end of bin Laden would not be the end of al Qaeda

Chandler believes that capturing bin Laden would not mean the end of al Qaeda as a fully-functioning network. Nonetheless, he argues, it would be important to finally get hold of him.

He rejects criticism of the US for not having been able so far to seize bin Laden somewhere near the Afghan-Pakistani border where he's believed to be hiding.

"When you go to that part of the world and see just how rugged and remote it is, it is very easy for a small group of five or six people to hide, providing they don't use satellite phones or any other similar devices. And remember, there is a lot of sympathy for them in that area. It is a big area and it is wild, believe me."

Chandler maintains that the US administration made a big mistake not to finish off al Qaeda after the war on the Taleban and to open up a new front in Iraq instead. The way things are going in post-war Iraq, he says, has increased al Qaeda's appeal among Islamic fundamentalists around the world.

Hardy Graupner