Islamic State Now Resembles the Taliban With Oil Fields

[KamaAina]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-25/islamic-state-now-resembles-the-taliban-with-oil-fields.html

With its reign of terror over a large population and ability to self-finance on a staggering scale, the extremist group that beheaded American journalist James Foley resembles the Taliban with oil wells.

The Islamic State, which now controls an area of Iraq and Syria larger than the U.K., may be raising more than $2 million a day in revenue from oil sales, extortion, taxes and smuggling, according to U.S. intelligence officials and anti-terrorism finance experts.

Unlike other extremist groups’ reliance on foreign donations that can be squeezed by sanctions, diplomacy and law enforcement, the Islamic State’s predominantly local revenue stream poses a unique challenge to governments seeking to halt its advance and undermine its ability to launch terrorist attacks that in time might be aimed at the U.S. and Europe.

“The Islamic State is probably the wealthiest terrorist group we’ve ever known,” said Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury terrorism and financial intelligence official who now is director of the counterterrorism and intelligence program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They’re not as integrated with the international financial system, and therefore not as vulnerable” to sanctions, anti-money laundering laws and banking regulations.

How could this happen?

[TwilightGardener]

1. Like a giant jihadi mafia. The old grainy Al Qaeda training-camp videos of

guys in hoods on monkey bars seem almost quaint.

[KamaAina]

2. What would DU say to bombing the crap out of those oil fields?

Thereby depriving ISIS of most of its revenue.

Yes, it is a rare day indeed when I contemplate military action,



but this would have the advantage of destroying property rather than human lives.

edit: I'm pretty sure I know what the oil companies would say, so I guess it's a moot point.

[CJCRANE]

3. We Built This.

Westerners using American weapons, recruiting and propagandizing using American owned social media, many of them trained, armed and funded by our allies, with a rat run through an allied country onto the battlefield.

We help them with one hand and fight them with the other.

We might as well cut out the middle man and punch ourselves in the face.

[hobbit709]

4. Just like the Saudis.

[Historic NY]

5. Who is buying the oil?

It can be stopped.

[KamaAina]

6. Good question.

That brings us back to my point about the oil companies. Nothing happens without their say-so.

[Historic NY]

7. That should be a strategic target for an air strike...

shut down their means to be funded and freeze financial transactions.