My speculation that hawala is small potatoes is contradicted by this WaPo story Al Qaeda’s Road Paved With Gold :
In small shops and businesses along the border, the money and gold, taken from Afghanistan’s banks and national coffers, were collected and moved by trusted Taliban and al Qaeda operatives to the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, according to sources familiar with the events.
Then, using couriers and the virtually untraceable hawala money transfer system, they transferred millions of dollars to this desert sheikdom, where the assets were converted to gold bullion.
And so much for the theory that they hate us because they’re poor.