Title: How are Terrorist Organizations Financed? | ASP American Security Project
Headings: How are Terrorist Organizations Financed?
How are Terrorist Organizations Financed?
Donations and State-Sponsored Terrorism
Extortion and Taxation
Illegitimate Businesses
Kidnapping for Ransom
The Bottom Line

Content: But in the last few years, terrorist organizations have become largely self-dependent through taxation, illegitimate businesses, and kidnapping for ransom. Donations and State-Sponsored Terrorism
Al-Qaeda is an example of a group funded through individual donations. Al-Qaeda was originally financed by Osama bin Laden, who supplied money and weapons using family wealth gained from his father’s multimillion-dollar construction company. In the 1990s, Bin Laden “ relied on ties to wealthy Saudi individuals that he had established during the Afghan war in the 1980s.” Various states have also supported terrorist groups over the years. Iran is seen as the leader of state-sponsored terrorism. The country went as far as helping to “ create the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon in the early 1980s in order to expand its influence in the region.” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have also supplied money to terrorist organizations. A 2012 NATO report explained that the support and training from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence was “critical to the survival and revival of the Taliban after 2001 just as it was critical to its conquest of Afghanistan in the 1990s.” Similarly, in the early 2000s, “ Saudi Arabia became a source of private funding for the Taliban” and “provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas.”