NOVEMBER 9 2016
The hawala system to move funds globally for terrorist financing is huge, secretive, and layered—and a challenge for national security agencies. Although India has taken regulatory and institutional steps to counter this form of financing, it must also create a community intelligence network and ensure financial inclusion to weaken the system. Across the world today, even as terrorist groups search for new technologies, new methodologies of operation, and newer source of funding, their reliance on one traditional system remains unchanged—they still use hawala to move and distribute funds to their cadres and sympathisers across the globe.