Stopping ISIS: Follow the Money

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/18/stopping-isis-follow-money

Wars are expensive. The recruitment and sustainment of fighters in the field, the ongoing purchases of weapons and munitions, as well as the myriad other costs of struggle, add up.

So why isn’t the United States going after Islamic State’s funding sources as a way of lessening or eliminating their strength at making war? Follow the money back, cut it off, and you strike a blow much more devastating than an airstrike. But that has not happened. Why?

Many have long held that Sunni terror groups, ISIS now and al Qaeda before them, are funded via Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia, who are also long-time American allies. Direct links are difficult to prove, particularly if the United States chooses not to prove them. The issue is exacerbated by suggestions that the money comes from “donors,” not directly from national treasuries, and may be routed through legitimate charitable organizations or front companies.

In fact, one person concerned about Saudi funding was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who warned in a 2009 message on Wikileaks that donors in Saudi Arabia were the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

At the G20, Russian President Vladimir Putin said out loud what has otherwise not been publicly discussed much in public. He announced that he has shared intelligence with the other G20 member states which reveals 40 countries from which ISIS finances the majority of its terrorist activities. The list reportedly included a number of G20 countries.

Putin’s list of funders has not been made public. The G20, however, include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Union.

[salib]

1. ISIS must have selling their oil to the wrong banisters, huh?

"One source of income for ISIS is and has robustly been oil sales. In the early days of the air campaign, American officials made a point to say that the Islamic State’s oil drilling assets were high on the target list. Yet few sites have actually been targeted. A Pentagon spokesperson explained that the coalition has actually been trying to spare some of ISIS’s largest oil producing facilities, “recognizing that they remain the property of the Syrian people,” and to limit collateral damage to civilians nearby.

The U.S. only this week began a slightly more aggressive approach toward the oil, albeit bombing tanker trucks, not the infrastructure behind them. The trucks were destroyed at the Abu Kamal oil collection point, near the Iraqi border."

They are now warned.

[CanonRay]

2. Follow the money right back to Saudi Arabia is my guess.

I think their Wahabi extremists are behind much of the crap going on, but that we really don't want to know.

[McKim]

3. This Has Been a Nagging Question for Me

I have often wondered why ISIS can sell oil and to whom, why haven't these trucks been targeted before? And the oil producing infrastructures? I smelled a rat. This is a massive disaster for all of us except the top 1%.

[starroute]

4. GhostSec (the Anonymous spinoff) says they're using Bitcoins

http://theantimedia.org/isis-terrorists-who-attacked-paris-have-a-bitcoin-wallet-worth-3-million/

Close on the heels of the perpetrators of the gruesome attacks on innocent bystanders in Paris, GhostSec has said that ISIS terrorists are owners of a massive bitcoin wallet worth $3 million. Many analysts have been questioning the source of finances for ISIS efforts. Some have pointed to ISIS extortion rackets and ransom schemes as the prime finances, in addition to black marketing of oil in Syria.

GhostSec, which is a off-shoot of the online hacktivist collective, has said that ISIS regularly uses cryptocurrencies to fund its operations. DW (Deutsche Welle) previously reported that the Islamic State is experimenting with currency, specifically gold and bitcoin. One bitcoin wallet received around $23 million in a month; anti-ISIS hackers from GhostSec followed a chain of transactions to another wallet with over $3 million in bitcoins.

Ghost Security Group confirmed to NewsBTC that ISIS is “extensively using bitcoin for funding their operations” and that the group has “managed to uncover several bitcoin addresses used by them.” Furthermore, bitcoin is “their prime form of cryptocurrency.” No evidence was given, such as the bitcoin wallet address, as the hackers “cannot go into more detail at the moment on current investigations.”

Use of bitcoins suits the ISIS affiliates as it offers some degree of security and anonymity to its digital transactions. In this case, as regards ISIS/ISIL, it appears we have GhostSec, who in some ways have done more to disable the neo-Caliphate organization than has the U.S. government or the French with their bombings and raids. Getting to the heart of any militant organization’s financing is absolutely the best way to slow them down.

[bklyncowgirl]

5. I would imagine that there are western corporations buying black market oil from Turkey

Turkish organized crime is not holding on to the stuff, that's for sure.

Following the money trail would be very, very interesting and probably will never be done. Who knows who might turn up at the other end?

[Wilms]

6. .