Blood From Stones

"Veteran investigative reporter Douglas Farah was the Washington Post's Africa bureau chief focusing on the diamond and illegal arms trade when, in the wake of 9/11, he made an explosive discovery: indisputable evidence that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups were laundering their cash by trading it for diamonds mined in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Probing the shadowy world where corrupt officials, diamond and arms merchants, vicious rebels, drugged child soldiers, and the informal Arab network of money changers known as hawalas intersect, Farah uncovered a crucial piece of the terrorism puzzle Western intelligence missed: the interlocking web of commodities, underground transfer systems, charities, and sympathetic bankers supporting terrorist activities throughout the world." "Farah's journey into the dangerous and uncharted world of terrorist financing 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 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 Southeastern 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."--BOOK JACKET.