thedrifter
08-07-03, 06:16 AM
08-05-2003
Guest Column: Go after the WMD Black Market
By Michael S. Woodson, Guest Contributor
As the United States continues the postwar occupation of Iraq and the ongoing fight against al Qaeda terrorists, the federal government is avoiding a critical front in this worldwide struggle: the international black market in arms and weapons.
This is an alarming situation, because experts believe that if al Qaeda ever does obtain a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon, it will most likely do so through the black market in arms that penetrates the former Soviet Union and other states.
Jamie Metzl, Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, four weeks ago said, “We know that terrorist financing hasn’t been cut off. We know that there are weapons of mass destruction that are available on the black market, from Russia, possibly from Iraq.”
Nor is this an issue that suddenly emerged from 9/11.
On Sept. 29, 1999, nearly two years before the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, then-Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke warned, “We must attack the economic structures that fuel the illicit arms trade – the gray and black markets in diamonds, precious metals, and narcotics.”
What specific accomplishments in combating black and grey markets has the U.S. government shown since Holbrooke spoke at the U.N. Security Council meeting on Africa four years ago?
While few experts on black and grey markets would deny that attacking and neutralizing the black markets that would traffic in WMD is a complex and difficult challenge, it cannot be more so than multi-division military invasion and occupation of a mixed-population country.
Black markets involve a number of concrete elements: people, places, boats, trucks, planes, trafficking routes, drug crops, cash, mines, gems, gold, diamonds, falsified documents, deadly substances, weapons, canister, containers, caches, laundered money, governments, and international non-governmental organizations. They frequently involve front organizations for distribution and storage, too.
And there is an unspoken dilemma in going after international arms dealers. As long as intelligence agencies use the dealers as intelligence sources and even as part of covert operations, to take out some of them that our agencies have used in the past would breed distrust in the shadowy world of covert insurgencies where they might play a supporting role.
Moreover, if we were to bring an international arms dealer to justice through extradition, the threat always exists that the accused may do a media tell-all at trial about his past relations with U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.
There is little information forthcoming to the public on efforts to take out the illicit arms dealers and cripple black- and grey-market arms trades beyond vague warnings and color-coded threat matrices. And as the hunt for Iraq’s suspected WMD arsenal continues, we are left with many unanswered questions:
What, specifically has been done to identify and destroy the markets, and what is being done now? Do U.S. government intelligence, law enforcement and military organizations have a concerted plan? To what degree are American and multi-national corporations under scrutiny for grey- or black-market profiteering from terrorism? These questions hit some powerful nerves at a time as journalists investigate Saudi-American business and government history, and their links to terror financing and agent-turned-terrorist “blowback” situations.
How many arms caches have been seized outside Iraq? What was found? Who was responsible? If so, when will the trials begin? How many international arms merchants have been shut down? What are their organizational fronts? How many American or multi-national organizations have been investigated for terrorist-profiteering? When are their trials? Have they been extradited? Are they dead? What pressures to extradite them have been brought to bear on foreign governments that shelter them?
Holbrooke in 1999 confirmed that black and grey markets trafficking in whatever can be sold – from weapons to people – are the choke points for the greatest lingering terrorist threat, the acquisition by al Qaeda or others, of a nuclear warhead or other WMD.
So where’s the beef?
Michael Woodson is an attorney and writer in Denver. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=157&rnd=399.3103248694173
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Guest Column: Go after the WMD Black Market
By Michael S. Woodson, Guest Contributor
As the United States continues the postwar occupation of Iraq and the ongoing fight against al Qaeda terrorists, the federal government is avoiding a critical front in this worldwide struggle: the international black market in arms and weapons.
This is an alarming situation, because experts believe that if al Qaeda ever does obtain a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon, it will most likely do so through the black market in arms that penetrates the former Soviet Union and other states.
Jamie Metzl, Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, four weeks ago said, “We know that terrorist financing hasn’t been cut off. We know that there are weapons of mass destruction that are available on the black market, from Russia, possibly from Iraq.”
Nor is this an issue that suddenly emerged from 9/11.
On Sept. 29, 1999, nearly two years before the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, then-Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke warned, “We must attack the economic structures that fuel the illicit arms trade – the gray and black markets in diamonds, precious metals, and narcotics.”
What specific accomplishments in combating black and grey markets has the U.S. government shown since Holbrooke spoke at the U.N. Security Council meeting on Africa four years ago?
While few experts on black and grey markets would deny that attacking and neutralizing the black markets that would traffic in WMD is a complex and difficult challenge, it cannot be more so than multi-division military invasion and occupation of a mixed-population country.
Black markets involve a number of concrete elements: people, places, boats, trucks, planes, trafficking routes, drug crops, cash, mines, gems, gold, diamonds, falsified documents, deadly substances, weapons, canister, containers, caches, laundered money, governments, and international non-governmental organizations. They frequently involve front organizations for distribution and storage, too.
And there is an unspoken dilemma in going after international arms dealers. As long as intelligence agencies use the dealers as intelligence sources and even as part of covert operations, to take out some of them that our agencies have used in the past would breed distrust in the shadowy world of covert insurgencies where they might play a supporting role.
Moreover, if we were to bring an international arms dealer to justice through extradition, the threat always exists that the accused may do a media tell-all at trial about his past relations with U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.
There is little information forthcoming to the public on efforts to take out the illicit arms dealers and cripple black- and grey-market arms trades beyond vague warnings and color-coded threat matrices. And as the hunt for Iraq’s suspected WMD arsenal continues, we are left with many unanswered questions:
What, specifically has been done to identify and destroy the markets, and what is being done now? Do U.S. government intelligence, law enforcement and military organizations have a concerted plan? To what degree are American and multi-national corporations under scrutiny for grey- or black-market profiteering from terrorism? These questions hit some powerful nerves at a time as journalists investigate Saudi-American business and government history, and their links to terror financing and agent-turned-terrorist “blowback” situations.
How many arms caches have been seized outside Iraq? What was found? Who was responsible? If so, when will the trials begin? How many international arms merchants have been shut down? What are their organizational fronts? How many American or multi-national organizations have been investigated for terrorist-profiteering? When are their trials? Have they been extradited? Are they dead? What pressures to extradite them have been brought to bear on foreign governments that shelter them?
Holbrooke in 1999 confirmed that black and grey markets trafficking in whatever can be sold – from weapons to people – are the choke points for the greatest lingering terrorist threat, the acquisition by al Qaeda or others, of a nuclear warhead or other WMD.
So where’s the beef?
Michael Woodson is an attorney and writer in Denver. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=157&rnd=399.3103248694173
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: