The Al-Qaeda network spent less than US$50,000 on each of its major attacks except the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, and one of its hallmarks is using readily available items like cellphones and knives as weapons, a new UN report says.
The first report released on Thursday by a new team monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban detailed just how little it cost al-Qaeda to mount operations, and how most of its attacks involved arms and explosives so unsophisticated they aren't covered by the punitive measures.
For example, the report said the March attacks in Madrid, in which nearly 10 simultaneous bombs exploded on four commuter trains, used mining explosives and cellphones as detonators and cost about US$10,000 to carry out. The blasts killed 191 people in Spain's worst terror attack.
Only the sophisticated attacks in the US on Sept. 11, 2001, using four hijacked aircraft "required significant funding of over six figures," the report said.
The report said UN sanctions have only had "a limited impact," primarily because the UN Security Council has reacted to events "while al-Qaeda has shown great flexibility and adaptability in staying ahead of them."
It cited al-Qaeda's transformation from an organization supporting Afghan fighters run by Osama bin Laden to an initiator and sponsor of terrorism from an established base, "to its current manifestation as a loose network of affiliated underground groups" with common goals.
This global network of groups doesn't wait for orders from above but launches attacks against targets of their own choosing, using minimal re-sources and exploiting worldwide publicity "to create an international sense of crisis," the report said.
"There is no prospect of an early end to attacks from al-Qaeda associated terrorists," it said. "They will continue to attack targets in both Muslim and non-Muslim states, choosing them according to the resources they have available and the opportunities that occur."
The report said al-Qaeda has promoted "the idea that Islam and the West are now at war," and appealed to "a widespread sense of resentment and helplessness in the face of the West's political and economic hegemony."
With the exception of the Sept. 11 attack, al-Qaeda's operations have been inexpensive, the monitoring team said in the report to the Security Council.
The twin night club bombings in Bali in October 2002 killed 202 people and cost less than US$50,000. So did the twin truck bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed 231 people, including 12 Americans, the report said. And November 2003 attacks in Istanbul -- four suicide truck bombings that killed 62 people -- cost less than US$40,000.
UN sanctions require all member states to impose a travel ban and arms embargo against a list of those linked to the Taliban or al-Qaeda, currently 317 individuals and 112 groups, and to freeze any assets. Sanctions were first im-posed on bin Laden's group in 1999.
The report said not a single country reported stopping an arms shipment or banning entry to a Taliban or al-Qaeda member on the UN list. Punitive measures to stop the financing of terrorist attacks have had some effect and led to "millions of dollars of assets" being frozen, but much more needs to be done to crack down on terrorist-related transactions, especially those going through informal channels, it said.
"As a result of national and international action, al-Qaeda's funding has decreased significantly. But so, too, has its need for money," the team said.
The number of people in training camps controlled by al-Qaeda "is now far less, and al-Qaeda no longer pays the US$10-20 million annually that it gave to its Taliban hosts" in Afghanistan before a US-led force routed the government in late 2001, it said.
While some money for the al-Qaeda attacks since 1998 may have come from "the center," the report said "much of it will have been collected locally, whether through crime or diverted from charitable donations."
One of al-Qaeda's "hallmarks" is the simplicity of its methods, including the transportation and weapons it uses -- for example, just small arms and knives in the attack on a residential compound in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in May 2004 that killed 22 people, the report said.
But there is evidence al-Qaeda wants to acquire "the means to construct bombs that would disperse chemical, biological or radiological pollutant," the monitoring team said, "and the threat to use such a device was repeated, albeit obliquely, in a communique from the Abu Hafs Brigade, an al-Qaeda offshoot, on July 1, 2004."
"Al-Qaeda related groups have tried at least twice to buy the basic ingredients for a dirty bomb and a good deal of the necessary technical knowledge is available on the Internet," it said. "There is real need therefore to try to design effective measures against this threat."
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