Hampering Islamic State Finances

"Foreign donations represented an important but comparatively smaller source of revenue for ISIL in 2014. However, externally raised funds are used frequently to finance the travel of extremists to Syria and Iraq."
"Of note, at least 19,000 fighters from more than 90 countries have left their home countries to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. This pool of international supporters is a source from which ISIL receives both physical and some monetary support."
Jennifer Fowler, U.S. Treasury Department 

An image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. (AFP Photo)

According to Ms. Fowler, the U.S. deputy assistance secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISIS succeeded in looting roughly $500-million from state-owned banks in Iraq. And they took in another $20 million from hostage ransoms. Another estimated $100-million was derived from the black market sale of oil with the aid of smugglers selling it to Syria, ironically, among other eager takers.

No mention was made of the black market sale of antiquities dug up and/or purloined from museums and offered to the vast market of eager buyers willing to pay generously for artefacts of historical importance. Artefacts that most museums have pledged not to add to their collections, but which avid collectors buying from black-marketeers take up instead with huge enthusiasm.

Yet another issue respecting terrorist groups, and in particular the Islamic State, for nations intent on diminishing its impact, calling in funding from international supporters and appealing to the adventure-seeking, Islamist-dedicated recruits globally, is to impair their fund-raising capacities. Should it be possible to impact deleteriously on their funding leaving them less for weapons acquisitions and general funding of terror militias, a blow could be struck against their effectiveness.

Another irony raises itself in this situation, where the Islamic Republic of Iran, a major supporter of terrorist groups acting in proxy for their mentoring state, is also joined in the Western effort to defeat and defuse the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, while leaving intact the Shi'ite terrorist group Hezbollah, a creation of the Republic of Iran which does its destructive bidding on the international stage. Yet Iran, a government that promises to be far more universally threatening than Islamic State, hovers on the brink of nuclear attainment.

Still, it is to the Islamic State jihadists with their newly-conquered territory comprising one-third each of Syria and Iraq that the world looks to and shudders with grave apprehension. It is ISIS that must be stopped at any cost. While Iran, which has extended its terrorist links from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq and now to Yemen, close to an agreement with the G5 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia) plus Germany which will soon enough reveal its nuclear arms threat, beginning in the Middle East, and extending beyond in its due end-of-times scenario.

In the meantime, Western governments have extended their military air strikes against ISIS, allied with support for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and now seeking to hamper the Islamic State financially. "It was apparent that terrorist financing and proceeds of crime are shared concerns for many countries ... and we must be determined to combat the risk, which has already occurred within our own borders", wrote Canada's Finance Minister Joe Oliver.

"As a result, I am requesting that the Standing Committee on Finance, at its earliest convenience, stud the cost, economic impact, frequency and best practices to address the issue of terrorist financing both here in Canada and abroad." The G20 meeting in Istanbul where the finance ministers of the world's most powerful economies agreed to the need to focus on co-operation to address the issue of freezing assets tied to terrorism and information sharing, was the forum for this announcement.

Where Western governments are pledging their full agreement an attempt to do great harm to ISIS  finances through the freezing of its assets and having nations sign on to preventing the group from moving its money. Its operating budget of between a few hundred thousand and $2-billion, much derived from black market oil sales, is the target at hand.

The atrocities being committed by Islamic State is a powerful enough incentive for  the West to react in view of the violence perpetrated by the fanatical jihadists.  Targeting the finances of foreign fighters "could help stem the significant flow" of extremists to Iraq and Syria, stated Jennifer Fowler. A goal that all the finance ministers present at the G20 summit agreed with.