The Gulf countries have taken significant national, regional, and international steps to stem the flow of funds to terrorist groups over the past decade. Various measures have been instituted to better regulate and secure the formal banking sector, alternative remittance systems like hawalas, and charitable organizations in the Gulf. The tragic January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, perpetrated by disciples of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have galvanized the world's attention and demand to combat terrorism and the financial networks that fund and support these acts. In the fight against AQAP and ISIL, Gulf states will play a critical role on the military, ideological, and financial fronts of the campaign to degrade and destroy these groups. While the Gulf countries have made substantial strides in protecting their financial systems, risks and vulnerabilities to terrorist financing such as private donors remain.
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Some cases related to the fight against terrorism, among others, have challenged some of the categories of international law on the use of force, generating a constant confrontation between what is considered legitimate and what is legal. The invasion of allied countries in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the incursion of the Colombian state into Ecuadorian territory to attack a FARC guerrilla camp have put the existing legal regime to the test and highlighted some of its limitations, questioning the treatment given to concepts such as "legitimate defense," "armed attack," "necessity," and "proportionality." There are alternatives to overcome some of the main problems, including the possibility of revising the composition and decision-making procedure within the UN Security Council. The doctrine of the use of preventive force, which has been resorted to to a greater extent by states in the fight against terrorism, is a dangerous path that threatens to undermine rights and infringe on freedoms. Historically generally rejected, it is not advisable for the doctrine to be strengthened as an institution of public international law.
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