Why Starving Terrorism Of Funds Is So Tricky

India’s hosting 3rd global meet on tracking terror money that increasingly flows through regular channels

No Money For Terror, is the motto of the third International Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing being organised by India in New Delhi today and tomorrow.

The first such conference was held in Paris in 2018 followed by the one in Melbourne in 2019. I had the opportunity to be part of the Indian delegation which offered to organise the next conference in New Delhi – demonstrating India’s keenness to be at the forefront of the global war on terror. Recently, India also hosted the UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee Meeting.

The first two conferences broadly highlighted that every terror action requires money and the need of the hour is to starve the perpetrators of funds. It was stressed that there is a dire and immediate requirement of international cooperation, integrated approach, and collective involvement of all nations to take the fight forward. This encoded the direction of future conferences.

● The whole world is aware of how state and non-state actors have leveraged criminal activities such as narco-trafficking, smuggling of arms, extortion and ransom to finance terrorism.

● Indeed, these trends can be commonly observed across the world from ISIS to Naxals at home.

● However, terror financing has also evolved over the past few decades by embedding itself in business transactions, inter-twining itself with white-collar crime, and misusing NGOs.