LIVING IN A CAVE SAVES ON ROOM SERVICE

Terrorism on the cheap (Globe and Mail, August 27th, 2004)

The Al-Qaeda terror network spent less than $50,000 (U.S.) on each of its major attacks except the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings, and one of its hallmarks is using readily available items such as cell phones and knives as weapons, a UN report says.

The report released Thursday by a new team monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban detailed just how little it cost to mount terror operations.

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 cell phones as detonators and cost about $10,000 to carry out. The blasts killed 191 people, Spain's worst terror attack.

Only the sophisticated attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, using four hijacked aircraft “required significant funding of over six figures,” the report said. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, the vast majority in the collapse of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

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.”

When have UN sanctions ever had more than a limited or ambiguous impact? The idea that Islamicism can be defeated through sanctions is as laughable as the 1930's belief that sanctions would bring Japan to heel. Time and again comfortable Westerners grossly underestimate the privations fanatics are willing to suffer and that fanatical regimes are prepared to impose on their people.

Sanctions exist to give weak nations an illusion of influence and an excuse for inaction, and to provide progressives the world over with a justification for opposing more direct American actions against terrorism and rogue states. Sadly, this leaves ordinary folks in the political center torn between alternatives they have been led to believe are equally effective. Betrayed by so many politicians and intellectuals who know better, is it any wonder so many of them are drawn to what appears to be the easier course?