Militants in Southeast Asia rely

Islamic militants across Southeast Asia have become increasingly dependent on donations, including zakat (alms), to finance bombings because governments have tightened bank controls, according to security experts. More than 50 per cent of terrorist financing in Southeast Asia now comes from individual donations, said Arabinda Acharya of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. ‘It’s now the largest source of money for militants because it’s difficult to detect,’ Acharya said at a workshop on countering the financing of terrorism in Manila this week, adding Islamic jihadists have been avoiding formal channels. But, he believed the money passing through informal methods, such as couriers, was not as substantial as that funnelled by al-Qaeda support groups before the 2001 deadly attacks in the United States. After the September 11 attacks, Acharya said militants elsewhere in the world had moved their funds out from banks and invested them in stocks, gems, real estate, insurance and other financial instruments. ‘We learned that Islamic militants in India were speculating in stocks and those in Africa were buying diamonds and other gem stones,’ he said, adding that those in Southeast Asia rely more on donations from charity organisations and from zakat, which is usually but not exclusively collected at mosques. In the Philippines, Acharya said the deadliest militant group, the Abu Sayyaf, was forced to go into kidnapping and extortion because the money it was getting from foreign and local donors was not enough to finance bombings. Citing a classified Philippine police report, Acharya said the Abu Sayyaf abandoned a plot in 2006 to blow up targets in Manila as well as build a chemical plant in the south because its funds from abroad were drying up.