ISIS is selling cheap oil to its enemies — from Syria's government to the Kurds
ISIS has been described as the world's "richest terrorist group," largely thanks to the oil fields it controls in Iraq and Syria. The militants likely generate more than $1 million in sales each day, and much of that oil is pumped in eastern Syria with the tacit approval of the group's ostensible enemy: the Assad regime.
"The Assad government has to run its war machine, it has to run its cities, it needs power," Landis says, and it can get its power from ISIS "cheaply" because ISIS controls much of the country's oil fields.
Syria isn't the only unlikely customer, he says. "Turkey, the Kurds — everybody is buying cheap oil and smuggling it across their border. So the notion that you have clear allies working against ISIS, it's not the case."
There's potential for current American airstrikes to destroy the black market oil trade and cut this important source of income for ISIS. "We can easily take out the oil," Landis says. "We can bomb ISIS tankers, we can bomb the oil wells. This would be very easy. They're sitting out in the desert where everyone could see them." But that would be a last resort. "[The US] may ask the neighbors to stop exporting it first, because it doesn't want to destroy all this infrastructure," he says. "It will, of course, cause a lot of hardship to the civilian population, and I'm not sure America is there yet."
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-16/isis-selling-cheap-oil-its-enemies-syrias-government-kurds
I wondered how ISIS got the oil from the wells it controls onto the market.
= new reply since forum marked as read
