Terror groups raise funds through drugs: DEA

ISRAEL: Nearly half of the 42 groups considered by the United States to be terror organisations fund their activities through drug trafficking, a top US official said in Israel.

The Drug Enforcement Administration's Michael Braun told a conference on "The Global Impact of Terrorism", organised by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, that the DEA "linked 18 of the 42 officially designated Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) to drug trafficking activities of some sorts."

The DEA's assistant administrator, chief of operations, told delegates the phenomenon was due to the fact that state support for terrorism had receded, and that terror organisations - Al-Qaeda in particular - have "shifted from a corporate structure to a franchise structure."

Braun said nothing was more profitable than drugs in raising cash for such groups. The United Nations estimates that narcotics trafficking is worth 322 billion dollars annually across the globe, and 65 billion dollars alone in the United States, according to federal figures.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are "the case study of this evolution," Braun said. According to the DEA, the group's drugs-related activities bring in between 500 million and a billion dollars annually, making it as much a drugs cartel as a terror organisation.

"That's what the Taliban are doing now in Afghanistan," Braun added. "They are taxing farmers, but we have indications that they started providing security. That's what happened to the FARC 15 years ago."

The DEA Internet website says Braun, a former US Marine who served in Vietnam, heads the agency's worldwide drug enforcement operations across the United States and in 58 countries.

"We'll have to deal with more and more hybrid" organisations in the future, Braun told the conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.

"When your job takes you to the swamps to hunt snakes, you can end up taking crocs too - they live in the same place."

Herzliya, Monday, AFP