The Terror Finance Briefing Book is a new product of FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) created to help policymakers better understand how terrorist groups fund their operations so that they may be targeted more effectively. This publication will compile financial assessments of select jihadist organizations in the Middle East and Africa. Each report will identify the key financial strengths and vulnerabilities of each group, review U.S. and international countermeasures, highlight possible wildcard scenarios which could impact future funding, and recommend the main areas where policymakers and counter-illicit finance strategists should focus their action.

For each report, the first four pages serve as a visually-engaging briefing aid, providing a concise overview of the respective organization’s finances. For those interested in a deeper dive into funding activity, a Financial Details section gives a more thorough look at the terrorist group’s funding model and developments over time, drawing on the most authoritative open sources.

The full compilation will be accompanied by an additional resource: CSIF’s Terrorism Designees Spreadsheet. This database, currently under beta testing, addresses a major gap in sanctions-related research: allowing researchers to see how many individuals and entities have been designated for sanctions by terrorist group. Until now, there has been no public database where terrorism designees could quickly be sorted by nationality and organization.

Each report in the Briefing Book will be published with a listing of affiliated designees for each group, linked on the appendices page.