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Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror
In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush froze all terrorist assets in traditional financial institutions and money channels. But Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have long followed a diversification strategy that has rendered the crackdown by the U.S. and other governments almost useless. Blood from Stones is the first book to uncover, through on-the-ground reporting, the interlocking web of commodities, underground transfer systems, charities, and sympathetic bankers that support terrorist activities throughout the world.
As a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post , Douglas Farah ventured into the dangerous and uncharted world of terrorist financing—a journey that took him across four continents. The information he gathered was far ahead of what U.S. intelligence agencies knew as they scrambled to understand the 9/11 attacks. In unprecedented detail, Farah traces the movement of money from the traffickers of “blood diamonds” in West Africa to the world diamond exchange in Belgium and homegrown money merchants in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Karachi, and Lahore who turn cash into commodities and commodities into cash. He probes charities that siphon off money to pay for such essentials as false identification cards and safe passage for operatives. And he reveals how the funding of terrorist activities is integrated into the age-old hawala network, a trust-based system that has operated for generations across Arabia and Southeast Asia.
Focusing on this critical aspect of the war on terrorism, Blood from Stones not only shows how terrorists are able to orchestrate complex and expensive attacks but also makes it clear why the war will be so difficult to win.
As a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post , Douglas Farah ventured into the dangerous and uncharted world of terrorist financing—a journey that took him across four continents. The information he gathered was far ahead of what U.S. intelligence agencies knew as they scrambled to understand the 9/11 attacks. In unprecedented detail, Farah traces the movement of money from the traffickers of “blood diamonds” in West Africa to the world diamond exchange in Belgium and homegrown money merchants in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Karachi, and Lahore who turn cash into commodities and commodities into cash. He probes charities that siphon off money to pay for such essentials as false identification cards and safe passage for operatives. And he reveals how the funding of terrorist activities is integrated into the age-old hawala network, a trust-based system that has operated for generations across Arabia and Southeast Asia.
Focusing on this critical aspect of the war on terrorism, Blood from Stones not only shows how terrorists are able to orchestrate complex and expensive attacks but also makes it clear why the war will be so difficult to win.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 13, 2008
I haven't finished this book. It's very short and I'm stalled very near the end. I borrowed it from work and it was "due" today...so I "returned" it, which means I now have it on an internal loan and cannot take it out of the building. Maybe I'll finish reading it in my office.
Even though I haven't finished it, I've decided to give it three stars. Maybe i'll change that later if I ever finish it. I am giving it three stars because while it began to get on my nerves and I became ever more annoyed at factual errors, I felt like it is a worthwhile read for anyone serious about following international terrorism in all its complexity.
It's a memoir of sorts by an American journalist, who in addition to enlightening his readers about financial networks that enabled the funding of terrorist operations around the world, is very much wanting to prove something that no one "in-the-know" would believe as he was uncovering it (the link between the diamond trade in Africa and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan). I can't blame his frustration with the powers-that-be, but I think his story would have been stronger if he had lessened that focus.
The farther into the book I got, the more intrigued I became. But at the same time, I also found it more and more difficult to be sure that I could trust his presentation of the facts. His focus on proving himself was part of my problem, but the other part were factual errors. Two such errors: he lumped Syria together with so-called Shi'a states in the Muslim world and he called Sayyid Qutb the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is majority Sunni ruled by a family from a minority sect that is nominally Shia and mostly secular. Qutb was an intellectual inspiration to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he was not a leader himself, at least nowhere near the level where Farah placed him. These two errors brought doubt to everything else in his book for me; so much of the information was new...if he was wrong about things i actually DO know something about, how can I know he is not wrong about countless other "facts" in his book? To make things worse for me, there were no footnotes and no real substantial endnotes to explain where he got his information. I wanted to know where he got his ideas about Syria as a Shia state and Qutb as the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood...but no such luck. I can only fathom he was writing his "background material" off the top of his head, rather than from solid research.
The style also bothered me somewhat. The story could have been riveting, like following trails and solving a mystery. Instead I found it unnecessarily difficult to follow at times and less than engaging than I had hoped.
Basically, I was a bit disappointed but still think it *can* be a worthwhile read. I would recommend it with reservations to someone who has a reasonably strong background in contemporary history of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Even though I haven't finished it, I've decided to give it three stars. Maybe i'll change that later if I ever finish it. I am giving it three stars because while it began to get on my nerves and I became ever more annoyed at factual errors, I felt like it is a worthwhile read for anyone serious about following international terrorism in all its complexity.
It's a memoir of sorts by an American journalist, who in addition to enlightening his readers about financial networks that enabled the funding of terrorist operations around the world, is very much wanting to prove something that no one "in-the-know" would believe as he was uncovering it (the link between the diamond trade in Africa and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan). I can't blame his frustration with the powers-that-be, but I think his story would have been stronger if he had lessened that focus.
The farther into the book I got, the more intrigued I became. But at the same time, I also found it more and more difficult to be sure that I could trust his presentation of the facts. His focus on proving himself was part of my problem, but the other part were factual errors. Two such errors: he lumped Syria together with so-called Shi'a states in the Muslim world and he called Sayyid Qutb the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is majority Sunni ruled by a family from a minority sect that is nominally Shia and mostly secular. Qutb was an intellectual inspiration to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he was not a leader himself, at least nowhere near the level where Farah placed him. These two errors brought doubt to everything else in his book for me; so much of the information was new...if he was wrong about things i actually DO know something about, how can I know he is not wrong about countless other "facts" in his book? To make things worse for me, there were no footnotes and no real substantial endnotes to explain where he got his information. I wanted to know where he got his ideas about Syria as a Shia state and Qutb as the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood...but no such luck. I can only fathom he was writing his "background material" off the top of his head, rather than from solid research.
The style also bothered me somewhat. The story could have been riveting, like following trails and solving a mystery. Instead I found it unnecessarily difficult to follow at times and less than engaging than I had hoped.
Basically, I was a bit disappointed but still think it *can* be a worthwhile read. I would recommend it with reservations to someone who has a reasonably strong background in contemporary history of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
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March 1, 2021Douglas Farah is a journalist who has followed the story of terrorist financing, encompassing groups such as Hezbollah and al Qaeda, around the globe. The title, besides being a take on an old proverb, refers to the conflict diamonds of the African continent. He first began to pick up the trail of terrorist involvement in the trade of diamonds mined in Liberia and Sierra Leone, when he was investigating the financing of rebel forces there. Buying diamonds from dictators such as Taylor in Liberia and RUF commanders gave al Qaeda a foolproof way to conceal their cash from intelligence agencies investigating banking records trying to shut down terrorist cells.
Farah also describes the hallawa system, in wide use in the Muslim world, which uses a network of friends or family to make funds available across individual boundaries based on trust, or "hallawa." The way it works is, for example, a Pakistani working in the UAE who wants to send cash home to his family, without paying the taxes imposed at the border, visits a hallawa broker in the UAE. He gives his money to the broker, who then calls a nephew, perhaps, in Pakistan, who is also a hallawa broker, and tells him to make the money available to the original man's family. No cash actually changes hands between the brokers, who have their own internal accounting system, opaque to the usual investigative tactics of law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
He also gets into the world of gold smuggling, which centers, in the Arab world, in the UAE, especially Dubai. While gold may be heavy, it's much less bulky than carrying an equivalent amount of cash across borders. Gold also has no serial numbers and isn't subject to inflation or devaluation in the way that many currencies can be.
Finally, Farah devotes some time to the whole area of Muslim charities, many of which are involved in funneling large amounts of cash to terrorist groups in Palestine, Chechnya, and other hot spots. These charities have been allowed to operate freely in the United States for many years, and only after 9/11 was there any sort of crackdown on their activities. In this section, Farah spends a lot of time criticizing the US intelligence community for its "willful" blindness in many of these areas. He and other journalist had evidently attempted for years to bring these matters to the attention of the FBI and CIA, but they just weren't interested.
Anyway, take away from it what you will, this is a great primer on terrorist financing, conflict diamonds, arms smuggling, and a few other subjects.
Farah also describes the hallawa system, in wide use in the Muslim world, which uses a network of friends or family to make funds available across individual boundaries based on trust, or "hallawa." The way it works is, for example, a Pakistani working in the UAE who wants to send cash home to his family, without paying the taxes imposed at the border, visits a hallawa broker in the UAE. He gives his money to the broker, who then calls a nephew, perhaps, in Pakistan, who is also a hallawa broker, and tells him to make the money available to the original man's family. No cash actually changes hands between the brokers, who have their own internal accounting system, opaque to the usual investigative tactics of law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
He also gets into the world of gold smuggling, which centers, in the Arab world, in the UAE, especially Dubai. While gold may be heavy, it's much less bulky than carrying an equivalent amount of cash across borders. Gold also has no serial numbers and isn't subject to inflation or devaluation in the way that many currencies can be.
Finally, Farah devotes some time to the whole area of Muslim charities, many of which are involved in funneling large amounts of cash to terrorist groups in Palestine, Chechnya, and other hot spots. These charities have been allowed to operate freely in the United States for many years, and only after 9/11 was there any sort of crackdown on their activities. In this section, Farah spends a lot of time criticizing the US intelligence community for its "willful" blindness in many of these areas. He and other journalist had evidently attempted for years to bring these matters to the attention of the FBI and CIA, but they just weren't interested.
Anyway, take away from it what you will, this is a great primer on terrorist financing, conflict diamonds, arms smuggling, and a few other subjects.
November 1, 2011
Douglas Farah was not the first person to write about the conflict diamond trade but he was the first one to make the US government pay attention. His discovery that Al Qaeda was funneling their dollars for conflict diamonds so that the bush (not the president) wars could continue. This is truly one of the most horrifying operations occurring in the US where what can only be described as evil is profiting on all sides. It is an easy to read book with an important message. For those who want to learn more about the conflict diamond trade and the problems it causes this is a great book to start with.
August 1, 2009
Maybe it's hard to understand the entire war on terror but this book illuminates an interesting corner of it. It's a good book for people who are interested in big issues but also need to have some concrete details. As other reviews have said, it's not too long and good journalism, showing amazing things that the bad guys have got away with. Unfortunately, the sort of people who buy diamonds for fun or profit are unlikely to read or be influenced by this book.
September 28, 2008
Good reading to understanding the financial networks of terrorists. You wouldn't believe half the stuff they get away with. Easy to read and not too long. It almost scared me to think the links he made may still exist.
May 16, 2012
Very interesting expose on the tentacles of terrorist financing into Africa. I knew a little bit about the subject before, but this book enlightened me on details. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of modern terrorism finance.
July 24, 2011
outstanding again. Farah is a great dense, informative writer who does a very good job communicating situations of different context, geography and topic into coherence.
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June 22, 2018interesting. Good reporting on the blood diamonds from Africa and their link to al Queda
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews