US: ISIL reaps $1 million a day from oil
ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria are amassing a fortune of $1 million a day through black market oil sales, according to the US Treasury Department’s top official for tracking terrorist financing.
David S. Cohen, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, provided details about the illicit financial network of ISIL on Thursday and described the group as the “best-funded terrorist organization” in the world.
ISIL has “grabbed the world’s attention for its outlandish ambitions and astounding brutality, but also for another reason: its substantial wealth,” Cohen said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“ISIL’s primary funding tactics enable it today to generate tens of millions of dollars per month,” he added.
Cohen said ISIL is currently selling oil at a significant discount to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey. “It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey.”
In a White House briefing later in the day, Cohen said the $1 million estimate was “pre-airstrikes,” and admitted that the United States does not have a clear projection of the group’s finances today.
In addition to illicit oil sales, the terror network has made $20 million in ransoms over the past year, the Treasury official added.
Cohen said that ISIL terrorists were also financing their operations through stealing and extortion.
“They rob banks. They lay waste to thousands of years of civilization in Iraq and Syria by looting and selling antiquities,” he said. “They steal livestock and crops from farmers. And despicably, they sell abducted girls and women as sex slaves.”
The ISIL terrorists, some of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Syria’s northern territory. ISIL sent its fighters into Iraq in June, making swift advances there over the summer.
Since September 22, the US and several of its Arab allies have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
The Syria air campaign is an extension of airstrikes on ISIL positions in neighboring Iraq, launched by the US and some of its NATO allies since August 9.
HRJ/HRJ