Law & Paneir

The Islamic State (or ISIS) is “the best-funded terrorist organization we’ve confronted,” but “we have no silver bullet, no secret weapon to empty ISIS’ coffers overnight.” These were the  words of David Cohen, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in a speech yesterday, in which he outlined the U.S. government’s assessment of ISIS finance and a strategy to counter it. According to Cohen, ISIS’ principal source of finance is still derived from its control and sale of oil, which he assessed was still bringing in $1 million a day. Additional funds come from kidnap for ransom, extortion networks, criminal activities, and donations from external individuals, the latter being of least significance in terms of scale. In order to counter this broad base of financial incomes, Cohen explained that U.S. strategy is focused on disrupting ISIS revenue streams, restricting ISIS access to the international financial system, and t...

A US-led coalition is at war in Iraq and Syria. Britain, a latecomer to the coalition, had to wait three days after parliament authorised intervention before it conducted a single airstrike, but has since destroyed several targets – documented tweet by tweet, and one even  caught on Channel 4’s cameras .  But airstrikes are tactics, and the successful destruction of an individual target tells us little about whether the broader military strategy – let alone the overarching political strategy – is working. How do we know if it is? Military Strategy Political leaders have not articulated their military or political strategy in any great detail, so this is a difficult question to answer. President Barack Obama has  committed  to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ ISIS, and this wording implies an acknowledgment of that fact that the short and medium term objective is to weaken rather than eliminate ISIS. Other US and British statements suggest that the ulti...

18 U.S.C. § 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”: "International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.* "Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous ...

2013 Wali Ur Rehman Second-in-command and chief military strategist of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan was killed in an explosion in Pakistan in May 2013, according to multiple media reports and a spokesman for the group. Sulayman Bu Ghayth Al-Qa‘ida spokesman and son-in-law of Usama Bin Ladin transferred to US custody in March 2013 after arrest earlier in the year. 2012 Abu Yahya al-Libi Al-Qa‘ida’'s second-in-command, widely seen as group’s “general manager,” was killed in Pakistan in June 2012; White House sees “major blow” to group’s capabilities. Fahd al-Quso Al-Quso, wanted in connection with the 12 October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 US military personnel and wounded 39 others, was killed in an explosion in southern Yemen in May 2012, according to multiple media accounts. 2011 Anwar al-Aulaqi Al-Aulaqi, a radical ideologue and attack planner associated with al-Qa‘ida’in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in an explosion in Yeme...

The strategy to prevent violent extremism in the United States outlines how the Federal Government will support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism. This strategy commits the Federal Government to improving support to communities, including sharing more information about the threat of radicalization; strengthening cooperation with local law enforcement, who work with these communities every day; and helping communities to better understand and protect themselves against violent extremist propaganda, especially online. Protecting American communities from al-Qa‘ida’s hateful ideology is not the work of government alone. Communities—especially Muslim American communities whose children, families, and neighbors are being targeted for recruitment by al-Qa‘ida—are often best positioned to take the lead because they know their communities best. Indeed, Muslim American communities have categorically co...

Assassination is a tactic used by nearly all terrorist groups, although far less frequently than other types of armed attacks. Assassination, when used as a terrorist tactic, is the targeted killing of a country’s public officials or individuals who represent the political, economic, military, security, social, religious, media, or cultural establishments. The killings can be motivated by ideology, religion, politics, or nationalism. Most terrorist groups conduct assassinations to eliminate enemies, intimidate the population, discourage cooperation, influence public opinion, decrease government effectiveness, gain media attention, or simply to exact revenge. Simple terrorism-related assassinations can be carried out with a minimum of personnel, training, or equipment, and they are usually successful when aimed at public figures who are protected least. An example of such an attack was the 2004 killing of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan extremist in the Netherlands. By ...

The  claim by Daesh  (or ISIS, as it is also known as) of some connection and responsibility for the attempted attack on Sunday 3 May 2015 in Texas is credible. While it is unlikely that the senior leadership within the group tasked the American pair or saw the event in Texas as a globally significant target, it is perfectly possible that it will emerge that the two men had at least some online connection to the group and were spurred into action by a combination of this contact and the group’s regular exhortations to its followers to launch attacks in the West. At the same time, it is not clear that this is in any way an expression of the beginning of a campaign by the group to launch terrorist attacks outside its territory or that we need to worry about Daesh anymore now than before. Rather, Daesh continues to show itself to be an opportunistically canny organisation that is able to read global trends and stoke public debates at the right moment to maximise their apparent...

The cruel beheading by a possibly British ISIS fighter of American journalist James Foley is the latest act of brutality by a group whose willingness to use such violence continues to reach new depths. However, in the understandable consternation around the group and its activity, care should be taken to understand better the exact nature of the threat that this group poses. ISIS is working hard to try to overturn the current Westphalian order with its repeated invocations of destroying the Sykes-Picot borders of the Middle East and has quite successfully taken over an ever-expanding chunk of the Levant. The question is whether the group remains principally a regional threat or an international one. The best answer is to look more closely at the group’s history. ISIS (or Islamic State as they refer to themselves) is a group that has waxed and waned over the years. Borne out of Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s group that he founded in Herat, Afghanistan in the late 1990s, it came to more...