Warde shows how operations such as the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks were actually financed, and juxtaposes the reality of shoestring budgets and envelopes of cash with the buzzing transnational network of transfers depicted by the finance warriors. He shows how the media's predisposition to stereotypes about 'Arabs and their money' allowed unsubstantiated rumours - such as Bin Laden's alleged personal fortune of $300 million - to become established as fact. He exposes the extent to which Washington policymakers simply transposed the template for the war on drugs to the war on terrorism, despite the fact that terrorism is not a profit-driven enterprise. Warde argues that the real purpose of the financial war is to create at least one front on which there can be unscrutinised 'victories', and where power can be seen to be exercised. He details the collateral damage inflicted on organisations such as Al-Barakaat, the Somali remittance network wrongly accused of channeling Saudi funds to terrorists, or Interpal, the UK-based charity wrongly accused of being a conduit for Hamas, and argues that such arbitrary asset freezes are counterproductive because of the damage they do to America's image in the Muslim world. Warde's book brings to our attention for the first time the absurdities of a phoney war.
Introduction : the fog of financial war
1 Fantasy, fiction, and terrorist financing 3
2 Framing the guilty : the financial terrain 23
3 The flawed memory laundering template 35
4 Money and the war on terror narrative 53
5 The usual suspects 63
6 Dynamics of the financial war 77
7 Targets and collateral damage 93
8 "Gated finance" and other contradictions of the financial war 107
9 The question of Islamic charities 127
10 "Catastrophic successes" : assessing the financial war 153
11 Rethinking money and terror 163
Epilogue : the last happy warriors
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