Lean years of Osama ‘broke’ Laden - Cash crunch forced Qaida to jump off high horse and order kidnappings: Documents by CHRISTINA LAMB

Osama bin Laden was so short of money during his final years in hiding that he ordered his fighters to kidnap foreign diplomats for ransom, it was revealed yesterday. Documents found in the compound where he was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, portray a cash-strapped al Qaida severely hampered by the economic downturn, which had prompted a fall in donations. This was compounded by a freeze on its international assets and an increase in American drone attacks, one of which killed the organisation’s financial director. The terrorist group was run like a multinational business and Osama, like a chief executive, tried to find new sources of revenue and make cuts. Al Qaida went from offering allowances to its fighters, who at one point were paid $108 a month, to leaving militants to pay for their own bed and board. The organisation has a financial wing headed by skilled accountants who insisted on receipts for every purchase, including computer flash drives costing a few dollars. Messages uncovered in the huge cache of documents recovered in Abbottabad make frequent references to a shortage of funds. In one, the head of al Qaida’s security unit complained about having “a very low budget, a few thousand dollars”, an intelligence official told The Washington Post. In others Osama himself complains about lack of money. John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, told The Sunday Times last week the biggest surprise was that “Bin Laden was far more operationally active and hands-on than we had realised”. But the terrorist leader was also clearly under tremendous pressure, both financially and operationally, from the drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas. “We know from the material from the compound that OBL himself recognised they were being pummelled,” said Brennan. “He wanted to carry out more attacks but his commanders were saying, ‘your aspirations outweigh our capabilities’.” In spring last year, the al Qaida leader sent a message instructing a deputy to form a group that would kidnap diplomats for ransom. Al-Qaida had rarely engaged in kidnapping, preferring to focus on the so-called “spectaculars”, except where abductions could be used as an instrument of vengeance. “It is a simple and clear equation,” Osama once said. “As you kill, you will be killed. As you capture, you will be captured.” With donations drying up it appears he decided to emulate other terrorist groups, such as the Taliban, for whom kidnapping provides an important revenue stream. Terrorist plots can be surprisingly cheap. The September 11 attacks in New York and Washington cost an estimated $500,000, and tens of thousands of dollars in unused funds were sent back by the hijackers to al Qaida accounts. Last year Yemeni operatives boasted that their thwarted attempt to hide bombs in courier packages to blow up two planes cost just $4,500. Brennan said that if it had not been for a tip-off from the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, “we would definitely have had a couple of airliners coming down, possibly over the US”. Osama needed cash for training, weapons, operatives and their families, bribes and hideouts, including the compound where he lived with his three wives and children. For years the organisation relied primarily on donors who had known Osama since his days of helping the Afghan mujaheddin to fight the Russians in the 1980s or who regarded him as an inspiration. Such funds were hard to track, coming through the informal money-changing hawala system of brokers in the Gulf and central Asia.

Courtesy- THE SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON