Who Funds ISIS?
Others take a different view. Günter Meyer is Director of the Center for Research into the Arabic World at the University of Mainz. Meyer says he has no doubt about where ISIS gets its funding. "The most important source of ISIS financing to date has been support coming out of the Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia but also Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates," Meyer told Deutsche Welle. The Gulf states' motivation in financing groups like ISIS was to support their fight against the regime of President Bashar al Assad in Syria, according to Meyer. Three quarters of the Syrian population are Sunni Muslims, but Syria is ruled by an elite drawn mostly from the Alawite minority. The Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Recently, however, the government of Saudi Arabia has recognized the dangers of this policy. "Saudi citizens now compose the largest contingent of foreign fighters in ISIS. When those fighters come home, there's a danger that they might turn against the Saudi regime," Meyer said. But there are reasons to believe that financing for ISIS continues to flow out of Saudi Arabia, "less from the Saudi government than from rich Saudis".
Money from oil and extortion
Additional key financing sources for ISIS, according to Meyer, are the oil fields of northern Syria. "ISIS was able to get those oil fields under their control. They use trucks to bring oil over the border into Turkey. That's an important source of funding for them."
http://www.dw.de/who-finances-isis/a-17720149
If this is all true the US banks should be able to "dry up" these sources of funds. It takes a lot of money to keep an Army marching.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Wow! There's John McCain!
