Qatar works to turn Somalia into another Afghanistan, says Ali

CAIRO – Director of the Center for Middle East Studies Abdel Rahim Ali said Thursday that Daesh has $3 billion in secret bank accounts.

The terrorist organization, he said, will use this money in financing its terrorist activities in other countries after the defeats it sustained in both Syria and Iraq.

He added at a seminar on the financing of terrorist organizations in French capital Paris that it is important for world governments to think of how they will fight the remnants of such terrorist organizations.

He faulted the French government in hosting the state of Qatar, a world terrorism-sponsor, to an international conference now held in Paris on terrorism financing.

He said Qatar has presence in Somalia, hoping to turn the resource-poor African state into an identical copy of Afghanistan and an incubator for terrorist groups.

Saudi Arabi and the United Arab Emirates, he said, made efforts to develop Somalia.

Nonetheless, he said, these efforts were hampered by Qatar.

He said Qatar and other world terrorism-sponsors will work hard in the future to ensure that Somalia will turn into a meeting point for world terrorists.

The seminar is organized by the Center for Middle East Studies. It is held simultaneously with an international conference in the French capital on the financing of terrorism.

French President Emmanuel Macron attends the international conference, along with a large number of terrorism experts and government representatives.