The “Isiest” Way to economic success

Friday, 30 October 2015

Worst Threat of the Century

An empire rose  full of hatred and despair which wished to  rule the world, giving no choice to human kind to adopt its customs and beliefs or to perish by flame. Unfortunately we are not talking here about the new Star Wars plot where a new dark lord will once again try to rule the galaxy but a more dangerous and less fictive threat which is more representative of the dark side than Darth Vader himself: but about ISIS.

Islamic State’s roots are quite unclear and terrorism specialists are still studying how a little group of extremists, the shadow of the terrifying Al-Qaida ten years ago could has grown so fast. The fact on which everyone agrees is that speaking about a terrorist organization is not anymore relevant and the term state is (sadly) closer to reality, especially when it comes to the economy .

  

Well organized Barbarians

ISIS’s leaders have a huge swath of territory to rule spreading from eastern Syria to western Iraq. The areas  under control of this Islamist group come under strict laws mostly coming from  the misinterpretation of the Quran and people living within those areas must obey  this absurd “legislation”. We are not speaking here about a fine for jaywalking but more about death sentences for having different beliefs than ISIS’s members. Islamic State is portrayed as a bunch of savages killing in the name of religious zealotry, seen as archaic people without any respect for human kind.

Despite the fact that ISIS’s views on world are completely outdated, its leaders are fully modern in the way they have to rule the state economy and it is this economic management that has made them so mighty. According to terrorism experts the group assets more than 2 billion dollars in its war chest, which is more than some African countries’ GDP.

From Piracy to Economic Strength.

Obviously, the group didn’t develop on the virtuous basis of capitalism and with the brave and pure idea of free enterprise.

At first, the organization operated in a guerilla-way , and they quickly began to strengthen and have a bigger influence in Iraq which led  to the takeover of Mosul (Iraq) and its central bank  in June 2014.

It was not the first time that ISIS invaded a city to take  control but Mosul was an unprecedented success for the group and offered them a large amount of resources and money. The Iraqi city was surrounded by oil fields and had large military infrastructures and everything fell  into ISIS’s hands. The bank of Mosul yielded $420 million to Islamists and the geographic situation of the city allowed them to have a stronghold near the Turkish and the Syrian borders.

As reported by specialists, the takeover of Mosul was worth $875 million.

It is now obvious that their finances are strong and to rule over the swath of territory they own they decided to act like a country would, planning a budget, stimulating their competitive advantage and making people contribute to the economy.

 Let us analyze their incomes in detail:

 

Taxes.

Or in this case: Extortion. The areas governed by terrorists are full of little businesses and big companies and those are strongly extorted by ISIS in order to keep operating. It is quite similar to taxes in the west but there the tax authorities  are a little bit more severe than we are used to. Stunning as it is, this is the terrorist’s first source of income.

Oil: 

We all know that oil is flowing in those area and ISIS has noticed it as well. They have managed  to extract and refine a lot of petroleum despite U.S air strikes on sites. Oil is not so representative of ISIS’s wealth since they use a big part of their production. The other part, which cannot not be sold on international markets for obvious reasons, is smuggled to Syria and Turkey and sold to affiliated networks.

Ransom:

Like every terrorist group, ISIS as sad as it is, kidnap and keep prisoners in order to blackmail other nations. When extremists don’t want to exchange prisoners against jihadists, they put a ransom on prisoners’ heads.

In conclusion, ISIS is a terrorist group acting like a simplified state when it comes to the economy and their supremacy over the region comes from their resources.As money is the key to winning a war, a good way to stop ISIS's killing rampage would be to dry up their resources. The international coalition has understood  it therefore we see more and more attempts to stymie ISIS’s source of income and we can but hope that it will succeed quickly.

Yannis.B

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