United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
Jim Fisher-Thompson
9 April 2004
Washington, DC — W. Post reporter says Liberia's Taylor protected Al Qaeda, Hezbollah activities
Washington Post Reporter Douglas Farah told the House Africa Subcommittee April 2 that two of the world's most violent terrorist networks -- al Qaeda and Hezbollah -- "have an interest in the regional diamond trade [in West Africa] that extends at least back to the mid-1990s."
The illicit trade in what are called "blood diamonds" -- because they are used to purchase arms that fuel conflicts -- came naturally to West Africa, where instability and weak governments have long attracted criminals and terrorists, Farah told Subcommittee Chairman Ed Royce (Republican of California).
"In short, al Qaeda and Hezbollah have maintained an active presence in West Africa for a significant period of time," Farah told the House panel, which was reviewing terrorist activities on the continent.
(Al Qaeda was held responsible for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed more than 220 people as well as the September 11, 2001 attacks on targets in the United States that killed close to 3,000 people. Hezbollah has been charged with numerous terrorist attacks on Israel in which civilians and soldiers were killed.)
Farah said his proof of terrorist groups' connection to the West African diamond trade "comes largely from the testimony of al Qaeda members convicted of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, my own investigations on the ground into al Qaeda's ties in West Africa -- particularly to Charles Taylor in Liberia and the RUF [Revolutionary United Front] in Sierra Leone -- and investigations by the London-based NGO Global Witness."
[The U.S. Governmentand its law enforcement agencies have investigated similar allegations against alQaeda.These investigations have found evidence a Hezbollah link to the West African diamond tradecould exist. However, the U.S. Government has been unable to substantiate an al-Qaeda link to West African blood diamonds.]
The son of missionaries, Farah grew up in Bolivia and has written for the Washington Post and other publications for 19 years. In November 2001 he reported on al Qaeda's ties to the blood diamond trade in West Africa. According to a biography the subcommittee provided, Farah had to flee the region after intelligence agencies uncovered a plot by Charles Taylor, whom he had linked to al Qaeda, to kill him.
On a leave of absence from the Washington Post, Farah is working as a senior fellow at the National Strategy Information Center. He has also just finished a book, "Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror," due to be released in May.
Since he began his investigations, Farah told the lawmakers, "new evidence has emerged," such as "public statements by the prosecutor and chief investigator for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the U.N.-backed body investigating crimes against humanity committed in Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. Both men -- veteran Department of Defense employees -- have verified the presence not only of the three senior al Qaeda members I [earlier] had identified as running the diamond business, but the presence of at least two other senior terrorists."
Farah said the evidence he has collected shows that al Qaeda's diamond trade was directed by Osama bin Laden starting sometime before 1996 and that the activities were watched over by Liberian President Charles Taylor, whose country was "in essence [a] functioning criminal enterprise. For the right price, Taylor let al Qaeda ... Hezbollah and other criminal elements operate under his protection in Liberia."
According to the journalist, "The first known contacts with the Taylor regime came in September 1998, just weeks after the bombings of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. A group of senior al Qaeda leaders involved in those attacks moved to West Africa, where they intermittently bought diamonds for the next two years."
Al Qaeda's lucrative trade soon expanded, he said, "because Taylor controlled the notoriously brutal rebels of the RUF in neighboring Sierra Leone [and] he was able to grant al Qaeda access to some of the world's richest diamond fields. They [then] set up a monopoly arrangement for the purchase of diamonds through Taylor with the RUF."
Incredibly, Farah said, "the available evidence points to al Qaeda purchasing some $30 million to $50 million worth of RUF diamonds during the eight months prior to 9/11."
Hezbollah has operated in West Africa since its inception in the early 1980s, longer than al Qaeda, Farah said, in part because of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese living in the region, "the vast majority being Shiite Muslims." For that reason, he said, Hezbollah "has a natural constituency and family ties that bind the region to the Lebanese conflict."
Basically, Hezbollah uses West Africa as a fund-raising site for its terrorist activities, Farah told the lawmakers. It "collects donations from businesses, runs shakedown operations, operates front companies and is also deeply involved in the 'blood diamond' trade."
In the diamond game, the journalist said, Hezbollah does business in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "These three countries all provided diamonds as a revenue stream to all factions of the Lebanese civil war," he said.
If the United States is serious about helping Africans deal with terrorism, Farah said, "the first step must be to greatly enhance human intelligence on the ground. Societies in which telephones are rare, Internet communications limited to a small percentage of the population in the capital and business deals depend largely on familial relationships, our high-tech monitoring systems are of little use. People must be on the ground, not just in the capital, but in the hinterland, to be able to map the connections and trace financial patterns that can be used by terrorists."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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