Analysts also say that the group gets
revenue from extortion payments, ransom from kidnapped hostages, and
outright theft of all manner of materials from the towns the Islamic
State group has seized.See details below...
U.S. intelligence
officials and private experts reveal that Islamic state militants
(ISIS) who once relied on wealthy Persian Gulf donors for money, have
now become powerful financially, racking in more than $3 million a day
from oil smuggling, human trafficking, theft and extortion.
According
to a U.S. intelligence official, the extremist group’s resources exceed
that “of any other terrorist group in history.”
Reports
from analysts also says that ISIS has taken over large sections of
Syria and Iraq, and controls as many as 11 oil fields in both countries.
“It
is selling oil and other goods through generations-old smuggling
networks under the noses of some of the same governments it is fighting:
Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.”
“There’s a lot of money to be made,” said
Denise Natali, who worked in Kurdistan as an American aid official and
is now a senior research fellow at National Defense University.
“The
Kurds say they have made an attempt to close it down, but you pay off a
border guard, you pay off somebody else and you get stuff through.”
A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, Luay al-Khatteeb, said: “The
price ISIS fetches for its smuggled oil is discounted — $25 to $60 for a
barrel of oil that normally sells for more than $100 — but its total
profits from oil are exceeding $3 million a day.
The
group also has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from smuggling
antiquities out of Iraq to be sold in Turkey, Khatteeb said, and
millions more from human trafficking by selling women and children as
sex slaves.”
Analysts also say that
the group gets revenue from extortion payments, ransom from kidnapped
hostages, and outright theft of all manner of materials from the towns
the Islamic State group has seized.
“Its
cash-raising activities resemble those of a Mafia-like organization,” a
second U.S. intelligence official said, reflecting the assessment of
his agency. “They are well-organized, systematic and (their actions are)
enforced through intimidation and violence.”
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