ISIS has "private donors, mainly in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."...
10/10/15, "Why Is Money Still Flowing to ISIS?" NY Times Editorial Board (10/11 print ed.)
"Videos of
Islamic State fighters driving brand-name S.U.V.s and pickup trucks in
Syria, Iraq and Libya are graphic proof that efforts to squeeze the
group financially have not done nearly enough. Now that the Obama
administration’s program to train and equip anti-Islamic State fighters
has ended in failure, there is even more reason to double down on efforts to choke off the group’s ability to raise funds and buy supplies.
For
the Islamic State, which is seeking to establish a caliphate across
Iraq and Syria, money is a potential Achilles’ heel. Unlike nations like
Iran, which have been under international financial sanctions and
controls, the Islamic State--also known as ISIS or ISIL--is not a
state. It lacks traditional economic relationships, it generates the
vast majority of its revenue from within the territory it controls, and
the sources of its revenues are not fully understood--all of which
present a difficult challenge, American officials say.
The
Treasury Department is leading an international effort to disrupt trade
routes, cut access to the international financial system, and impose
sanctions on Islamic State leaders and anyone who assists them. Last
week, the State Department offered a reward of up to $5 million for information that leads to a significant disruption of sales of oil or antiquities benefiting the group....
The
sight of brand-name vehicles in the group’s convoys is a sure sign that
something is awry, especially when Toyota, the manufacturer, says it has a policy of not selling to purchasers who might modify vehicles for terrorist activities.
Nearly
a year ago, David Cohen, then the Treasury undersecretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence, told Congress the Islamic state “does not
have the money to meet its costs.” Yet the terrorists now control a huge
swath of territory in Syria and Iraq with millions of people and have
drawn thousands of recruits from Europe and elsewhere. They are waging
war against an American-led coalition and other forces. That takes
hundreds of millions of dollars....
American officials say the Islamic State generates most of its revenue within the territory it rules, beyond the reach of the usual counterterrorism tools. Extorting civilians and businesses has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, they say. Despite American efforts to cut off the group’s oil revenues, the most recent estimate is that ISIS earns about $40 million a month selling oil from fields in Syria and Iraq, with refined products going to local buyers, while crude oil is sold to middlemen and smugglers with customers in Iraq and Syria, including the Syrian regime, and beyond.
American officials say the Islamic State generates most of its revenue within the territory it rules, beyond the reach of the usual counterterrorism tools. Extorting civilians and businesses has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, they say. Despite American efforts to cut off the group’s oil revenues, the most recent estimate is that ISIS earns about $40 million a month selling oil from fields in Syria and Iraq, with refined products going to local buyers, while crude oil is sold to middlemen and smugglers with customers in Iraq and Syria, including the Syrian regime, and beyond.
The
Islamic State is also looting banks; demanding ransom from kidnap
victims; engaging in human trafficking; selling off plundered
antiquities; and leaning on private donors, mainly in Qatar, Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia....
Last
November Mr. Cohen stressed the importance of working with Turkey and
Kurdish leaders to clamp down on cross-border smuggling, but that hasn’t
been effective enough. Some American officials now say they are less
confident that tightening Turkey’s border will disrupt the Islamic
State’s profits from black-market oil sales.
The
top priority now seems to be the blocking of the Islamic State’s use of
banks and financial exchanges in Iraq, so the group won’t be able to
buy weapons and other supplies. Treasury officials say they have
succeeded in cutting off dozens of banks in Islamic State territory from
the Iraqi and international financial systems. As the Islamic State
moves to establish affiliates in other countries it may become easier to
uncover those networks, because they will have to communicate over long
distances and possibly assist one another financially, officials say.
If
the group’s brutal rampage is to be halted, more effective efforts to
undermine its finances are essential. Military force can be only one
element of a multipronged strategy."
............
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With enough opaqueness and techno-legal
loopholes in the functioning of regulatory mechanism of the
international financial system, and an active support by some states to
the Islamic State, it's well nigh impossible to either starve the
Islamic State of finances or to wage an effective war against it. The
main difficulty being faced in putting together a united international
effort against the scourge of terrorism is the lack of a commonly agreed
definition of global terrorism and a common will among the nations to
confront it. As such one man's terrorist becomes a freedom fighter for
the other. Or, when the cross-border terror strikes India, it's a
regional problem, and when the terror strikes the US it becomes a
global phenomenon necessitating a global war against it. It's this
duplicity of nations and shadow financial transactions across the
borders together with the functioning of a parallel global economy that
makes it difficult to fight against the ISIS or other terror outfits."
....................................................
"We cannot fight ideas with
airplanes and bombs and military assistance blah blah blah. Further, it
is the US in particular and the West in general that is responsible for
destabilizing much of the Middle East."...
"CJGC is a trusted commenter Cambridge, MA 2 hours ago
The US hasn't a clue. When Obama gave his
address to the nation in September 2014 about going after ISIS I thought
immediately that he didn't understand anything about the Middle East
and the limits of our military power.
We cannot fight ideas with airplanes and bombs and military assistance blah blah blah. Further, it is the US in particular and the West in general that is responsible for destabilizing much of the Middle East. The Bush/Cheney administration seriously had no idea what it was doing....We just bombed an MSF [Doctors Without Borders] hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Either we were bamboozled with deliberately poor intelligence by someone on the ground or we knew nothing of what was in Kunduz. In any case, after 14 years in Afghanistan we haven't a clue. Of course we can't do anything about ISIS."
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