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Combating Terrorist Financing in the Gulf: Significant Progress but Risks Remain

The Gulf countries have taken significant national, regional, and international steps to stem the flow of funds to terrorist groups over the past decade.

Celina Realuyo
Combating Terrorist Financing in the Gulf: Significant Progress but Risks Remain

Executive Summary

The Gulf countries have taken significant national, regional, and international steps to stem the flow of funds to terrorist groups over the past decade. Various measures have been instituted to better regulate and secure the formal banking sector, alternative remittance systems like hawalas, and charitable organizations in the Gulf. The tragic January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, perpetrated by disciples of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have galvanized the world’s attention and demand to combat terrorism and the financial networks that fund and support these acts. In the fight against AQAP and ISIL, Gulf states will play a critical role on the military, ideological, and financial fronts of the campaign to degrade and destroy these groups. While the Gulf countries have made substantial strides in protecting their financial systems, risks and vulnerabilities to terrorist financing remain.

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Celina Realuyo

is professor of practice at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University where she focuses on U.S. national security, illicit networks, transnational organized crime, counterterrorism, and threat finance issues in the Americas.

The views represented herein are the author’s or speaker’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of AGSIW, its staff, or its board of directors.

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