Countering the Financing of Terrorism

Groups committing acts of terrorism have adapted their means of financing to elude detection since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Surveying the global community’s multi-year effort to cut off terrorist funding, this volume offers a much-needed analysis of a complex, widely discussed, yet poorly understood subject. While books on terrorism have touched upon the topic, this is the first comprehensive, balanced, and scholarly overview of terrorist financing, its methods, and efforts to counter it. Bringing together leading analysts of terrorism, international relations, global finance, law, and criminology, Countering the Financing of Terrorism provides a critical assessment of the international effort to restrict terrorist financing. It evaluates the costs and benefits and offers recommendations for more effective policies for the future.

This ambitious and fascinating collection will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand an often overlooked aspect of our struggle against terrorism. By taking us inside the operations of terrorists and efforts to track and cut off their financing, this volume provides an indispensable resource for all who want to understand what we have learned about terrorist financing, and what we can do better in the years to come.Lee Hamilton, President, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and former Chairman, House Committee on International Relations This volume makes an important and timely contribution to understanding the critical issue of how terrorists acquire and use financial resources and how governments and international organizations can control money flows. The authors, experts from a variety of fields, expose the complexity of the problem and challenge the conventional assumptions that have guided counterterrorist policy.Martha Crenshaw, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues & Democratic Thought, Wesleyan University.This very substantive collection provides an illuminating and practical guide to a side of terrorism that, by its nature, should be susceptible to effective counter-action both at the national and the global level. Its authors have done an important public service.Sir Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary-General, United Nations, "This ambitious and fascinating collection will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand an often overlooked aspect of our struggle against terrorism. By taking us inside the operations of terrorists and efforts to track and cut off their financing, this volume provides an indispensable resource for all who want to understand what we have learned about terrorist financing, and what we can do better in the years to come."- Lee Hamilton, President, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and former Chairman, House Committee on International Relations "This volume makes an important and timely contribution to understanding the critical issue of how terrorists acquire and use financial resources and how governments and international organizations can control money flows. The authors, experts from a variety of fields, expose the complexity of the problem and challenge the conventional assumptions that have guided counterterrorist policy." - Martha Crenshaw, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues & Democratic Thought, Wesleyan University, USA"Banking terror kills. This compendium tells how to stop it and profiles the central role that financial intelligence plays in the war on terror." - David Aufhauser, former General Counsel, U.S. Department of the Treasury"This very substantive collection provides an illuminating and practical guide to a side of terrorism that, by its nature, should be susceptible to effective counter-action both at the national and the global level. Its authors have done an important public service." - Sir Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary-General, United Nations"This edited volume brings together leading experts from the disciplines of terrorism, international relations, global finance, law, and criminology, to assess the effectiveness of governments and international organizations in countering the methods employed by terrorists to fund their operations." - Joshua Sinai, ‘Terrorism Bookshelf: Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism’, Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2012)

Thomas J. Biersteker is Curt Gasteyger Professor of International Security and Conflict Studies at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva and Olive C. Watson Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies and Department of Political Science, Brown University. Sue E. Eckert is Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University. She previously served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce responsible for regulating dual-use commodities, and as senior staff on the House International Relations Committee dealing with sanctions and export controls.