Hello everyone, and welcome to the many new subscribers to this newsletter! Our community is now well over 1500 strong and growing every day. Thank you all so much for your support — it means a lot, and helps make this project sustainable. It’s been a really long time since I did an update newsletter, summarizing all the things the team and I have been up to over the last few months. So here’s everything you might have missed over the last little while, or if you’re new around here. Remember: if you have a paid subscription, you can access the over 200 articles in the archive.
A brief note on methods
Some of you might have noticed that I tend to create mini profiles of groups / attacks. This is part of the research methodology that I used for Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the 21st Century. Some of these profiles were created for the book (I’m still working my way through all my archival research!), while others have been created since Illicit Money went to press. I keep my basic descriptive statistics up to date with this information, so it allows me to track trends over time and bring you the most up-to-date analysis, backed by evidence. So if you’re ever looking for ‘proof’ for one of my assertions, odds are good it can be found in these short case studies.
New Group Profiles
The group profiles outline known methods that terrorist and extremist groups exploit to raise, use, move, store, manage, and obscure their funds. These profiles create a body of knowledge from which we can measure changes.
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
The Taliban’s Evolving Finances
New Attack Profiles
The attack profiles illustrate how individual attacks were financed. They generally include an analysis of the cost involved, which allows me to keep a running tally of the cost of terrorism over time.
Air India Flight 182: The Transactions leading to Terrorism
Buffalo shooting: financing terrorism
Hisham Chaudhary: Financing Terrorism Using Bitcoin
New Commentary
Canada is shirking its responsibility to Afghans by hiding behind counterterrorism financing laws
A missed opportunity: Canada's Cullen Commission
Mass murder in Nova Scotia: conspiracy theories and financial intelligence
Senate committee testimony: IMVE
Trends Analysis
This report type outlines changes in trends, or anything new that I’m seeing in any of my areas of research. In this case, I focused on the adoption of the tactic of suicide bombings by the BLA.
The Balochistan Liberation Army's Female Suicide Bombers
News Roundups
Disrupting female terrorism in Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere
Corporate Complicity in Terrorist Financing
Women in Terrorism News Roundup (April 2022)
Convoy Finance
As the ‘Freedom Convoy’ and associated individuals roll back into Ottawa this week for more protests, I took a look at the new corporate entities that several have established. Spoiler: they’re making use of not-for-profit corporations in Canada to potential avoid paying taxes, to create a veneer of legitimacy, and more. Here’s the full series, with the latest at the bottom:
Convoy Finance: Digging in and diversifying away from GoFundMe
Convoy Finance: Assessing Effectiveness and Learning Lessons
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