Rat’s Nest International

By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS ― A veritable ``rat's nest international,'' remains under scrutiny by the U.N. ``al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions'' committee.

Now a decade after the Security Council set up the watchdog group aimed at monitoring and banning support for hundreds of terrorist suspects, the committee Chairman Thomas Mayr-Harting, ambassador of Austria, concedes ``major shortcomings'' in the accuracy of the list of individuals and companies subject to sanctions including the freezing of assets, travel bans and arms embargoes.

Ambassador Mayr-Harting stated there was insufficient information on about one-third of the 513 names on the current list of 402 individuals and 111 firms.

The data shortfall prevented the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from providing ``special notices,'' without which law enforcement entities and border guards cannot implement the resolution. He added that 38 of the persons listed were presumed dead.

While critics lambasted this assertion ― something akin to deceased people listed on a voters roll in Chicago or Philadelphia ― it does not say that the majority of the information is wrong.

Of the 402 suspects, 260 have al-Qaida affiliations while 142 are connected with the Taliban.

Consider for a moment the committee area of responsibility; Afghanistan, Pakistan's wildest frontier regions, Algeria, Somalia, and Yemen and one begins to see why information is hard to collect, often deliberately misleading, and changing like the shifting of the desert sands.

Information is voluntarily provided by U.N. member states. The committee is charged with identification and then slapping targeted financial sanctions; freezing bank accounts and currency transfers, travel bans, and arms embargoes.

Being realistic, suspects on the list no doubt have some pretty creative ways to bank and move money, are not exactly traveling on British Airways business class, nor have any need to buy weapons which they already have in abundance.

But after having reviewed the list with 400 names and over 100 companies, I could not but recall the U.N.'s infamous ``Oil for Food Committee'' which presumably monitored transactions of the Saddam Hussain regime's tightly sanctioned oil sales in exchange for food and humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people.

Naturally all sorts of sleazy deals lubricated oil for food transactions, turning the operation into something which would make Bernie Madoff blush.

But the cast of characters presented here somehow echoed the telephone directory thick lists of firms listed through Paul Volker's very polite investigation of Oil for Food.

The Taliban and al-Qaida sanctions committee list boasts a casbah maze of Islamic benevolence groups and charities (some with links in Canada and the United States), various banks and money transfer operations in Somalia, the more virile Islamic International Brigades and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, and al-Qaida in Iraq, varied and sundry ``trading companies'' and quite improbably, a group of sweet shops and honey producers in Yemen.

For example, the Algeria-based al-Qaida of the Maghreb has threatened Chinese workers in Africa to avenge Beijing's mistreatment of ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang province.

Individuals listed form a wide array of criminals who tend to come from North Africa, Pakistan and the Philippines. Richard Barrett, coordinator of the committee's sanctions monitoring team, stated that most threats focused on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, North Africa, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, among other regions.

When asked about specific areas of concern, Barrett said al-Qaida had ``close relationships'' with groups in that region, particularly in Algeria, and was actively recruiting in Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, and particularly in Mauritania. However, ``Algeria remained the main focus.''

The United Nations should know. Islamic terrorists bombed the U.N. Algiers offices in December 2007, killing 17 staff members.

Equally, Indonesia's Jemaah Islami network may be implicated in the terrorist bombing of two luxury hotels in Jakarta killing many foreigners.

Viewing al-Qaida in the Philippines, Barrett added that the Abu Sayyaf group had been listed as one of the most active in that archipelago's Mindanao island. It was ``near the top'' in terms of killings by al-Qaida associates. In mid-July, Islamic militants bombed a church in the southern Philippines.

Global terrorism remains a serious threat. While the committee does not have arrest or prosecutorial powers, it gathers key pieces of the puzzle ― vital information which can lead to arrests and prosecution.

Whether or not governments are willing to take this seriously and tighten the global noose on the Taliban and al-Qaida remains quite another question.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of ``Divided Dynamism ― The Diplomacy of Separated Nations; Germany, Korea, China'' (University Press, 2001). He can be reached at jjmcolumn@att.net.