Islamic State now worlds richest rebel group: Experts Washington: The Islamic State has become the world’s wealthiest rebel group, generating tens of millions of dollars a month from black market oil sales officials said on Thursday. It earns US dollar 1 million a day alone by selling crude oil from fields captured when the group swept across Iraq and Syria earlier this year, said David Cohen, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. IS is now, “considered the world’s wealthiest and most financially sophisticated terrorist organisation,” said Marwan Muasher, vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Unlike al-Qaeda, IS does not attract most of its funds from deep-pocketed rich donors, often in Gulf countries, or from state sponsors. Yet “with the important exception of some state- sponsored terrorist organisations, ISIL is probably the Oil sales alone from captured refineries are allowing the militants to produce some 50,000 barrels a day sold “at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middle men, including some from Turkey, who then transport the oil to be resold.” Oil has also been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold to Turkey, as it has “tapped into a long- standing and deeply rooted black market connecting traders in and around the area.” Even Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is fighting ISIL as well as the moderate US- backed opposition, has got in on the act and “made an arrangement to purchase oil from ISIL”— from fields and refineries once under Syrian control.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:38:01 +0000
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