Operationalizing Counter Threat Finance Strategies

: It is a well established axiom that attempting to defeat an insurgency or a terrorist organization head-on is merely treating the symptoms of a problem. For long-term success, the campaign must also address the root causes of the insecurity that spawned conflict in the first place. In this monograph, British academic and practitioner Dr. Shima Keene describes a number of ways in which financial intelligence can be leveraged not only to disrupt adversary activities, but also to provide indicators and warnings of future actions and, ultimately, to address underlying insecurities. Dr. Keene was previously both a banker and a British Army reservist. In this monograph, she uses her expertise as a threat finance specialist to outline specific areas where financial intelligence analysis techniques, which are common in the private sector, can be applied to combating insurgency, terrorism, and other hard security threats. Dr. Keene argues that financial disruption techniques used in counterinsurgency have been poorly coordinated and at times counterproductive, and cites the targeting of the Hawala money transfer system as a specific example. Instead, she notes intelligence derived from analysis of financial data can provide much greater value in both understanding and predicting the adversary s activities, as well as providing for precise targeting to disrupt them. The Strategic Studies Institute recommends this monograph not only to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism practitioners and policymakers, but also to the Intelligence community more widely; all of these will find its conclusions on the handling of financial data and the value of threat finance analysis valuable.