ISIS has estimated $100 million in 'peaceful' cash reserves, relies on money transfers from supporters in Turkey and Iraq

[duluxe]

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2021/01/isis-islamic-state-turkey-iraq-treasury-1.html


The Islamic State terror group was largely crushed by coordinated international effort in 2019, but its networks appear to still have access to an estimated $100 million in cash reserves stashed across the Middle East, the US Treasury Department said.

IS’ monetary reserves are at a historic low since it took over swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, having since lost all of its tax- and oil-producing territory.

But the group’s remnants in Syria continue to receive streams of cash from associates based in neighboring Turkey and from smugglers in Iraq, according to an unclassified Treasury Department memo released earlier this month.

Some of those transfers have gone via local hawalas (money services businesses) in the notorious al-Hol internment camp, which houses some 50,000 family members of IS fighters. Other cash shipments have been delivered by courier across the flat, open desert border between Iraq and Syria.

Inside Syria, the group continues to raise funds “through extortion of oil smuggling networks in eastern Syria, kidnaping for ransom targeting civilian businesses and populations, looting and possibly the operation of front companies,” the memo from the Treasury’s chief auditor read.

The document provides a limited window into a forgotten front in the US-led war against the jihadi proto-state, a conflict that has largely dropped from the headlines. But networks of IS militants are still out there, and as last week’s twin suicide bombings in Baghdad underscore, they remain deadly….

 

[syed putra]

The gomen of turkey and previously Saudi supported IS. In the case of saudi, to balance shiite power. In turkey, its for historical and sentimentsl reasons. They used to lord over these territories just 100 years ago.