The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

and probably much of the rest of the world, it is time to accept the important role that poverty plays and put in place long-term measures to deal with it. Financing Terrorism Charities sponsored by Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states have probably financed most of the international terrorist activity in the region, with funds coming both from private individuals and gov- ernments. In the case of Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent Qatar, the charities are closely linked to efforts to promote the fundamentalist Sunni Islamic creed known popularly as Wahhabism. Toward that end, in 1962 Saudi Arabia created the state-financed Muslim World League to underwrite mosques, schools, libraries, hospitals and clinics around the world. Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, its highest religious authority, serves as the organization’s president. The League encompasses a wide range of entities, including the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief Organization. These chari- ties have been active in East Africa and the Horn for years, building mosques and implementing useful social programs. But some of their branches have also funneled money to al-Qaida and associated terrorist organizations, and the U.S. has accused the former director of al- Haramain in Tanzania of planning the 1998 attacks on the embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. After the 9/11 attacks, Washington stepped up pres- sure on Saudi Arabia to control these charities. In 2002, the two countries jointly designated the Somali branch of al-Haramain as an organization that had sup- ported terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and the Somali-based al-Ittihad al-Islamiya. Early in 2004 both countries notified the U.N. Sanctions Committee that the branches of al-Haramain in Kenya and Tanzania provide financial, material and logistical support to al- Qaida and other terrorist organizations. They asked Kenya and Tanzania to seize the assets of both branch- es. At the request of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the F O C U S S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39