Disrupting terror finance key to counter-terrorism

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]I[/dropcap]nterrupting communications and finance transactions of terror outfits are vital to handling terrorism as such actions triumph because of movement of “guys, money, material and messages”, US-based terror expert Amit Kumar has said.

“Communication by way of messages, stream of cash or anything that has (financial) value must spread terrorism. By transferring messages, money, materiel and men terrorists triumph. The successful counter-terrorism strategy could be to disrupt their communication and finance,” Kumar told IANS while on a visit here.

Kumar, who’s president of Washington-based AAA International Security Consultants LLC, said some measures have already been taken for interrupting terrorist messages by working with social media sites such as YouTube. “Arms embargoes, travel ban, freezing of assets and immigration checks are several other measures being taken world-wide,” said Kumar.

“The next strategy to counter terrorism ought to be to unravel the nexus between terrorist finance and crime. Both organised and petty crime are proven to intersect with terrorist funding activities,” he added.

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]B[/dropcap]itcoin is a payment system which helps users to transact cash without an intermediary along with a digital asset. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, owners of bitcoins can use various websites to trade them for physical currencies, for instance dollars or euros, or can exchange them for goods and services from a variety of sellers.

Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography, in which users possess a public key that’s available for everybody to see and a private key known only to their computers.

Kumar gave the example of a 17-year-old tech-savvy youth, Ali Shukri Amin, a resident of Virginia, who had been held by US agencies a year ago on charges of providing Islamic State assistants with instructions on using bitcoins to hide financial contributions.

Kumar said that the banking system can and does successful tracking of bitcoins.

“For instance, if a bitcoin user buys a bitcoin, he does intersect the banking system by the way of PayPal (an American business operating a worldwide online payments system) or some form of on-line intersectional interphase of a bank.

“By monitoring, you can try and avert the potential use of bitcoin by a criminal or a terrorist. Otherwise the bitcoin transaction and usage becomes anonymous,” he explained.

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]K[/dropcap]umar, who has worked previously with Al Qaida/Taliban sanctions regime in the United Nations, also talked about measures like de-radicalisation of terrorists or would-be terrorists to counter terrorism.

Kumar said AAA International Security Consultants LLC provides consulting, training and program development, and research services in a range of areas, including counter terrorism, counter terrorist-financing and anti-money laundering.

(IANS)