Friday, April 29, 2016

ISIS is now running car dealerships and fish farms to make up for lost oil profits

fish
Islamic State earns millions of dollars a month running car dealerships and fish farms in Iraq, making up for lower oil income after its battlefield losses, Iraqi judicial authorities said on Thursday. Security experts once estimated the ultra-radical Islamist group's annual income at $2.9 billion, much of it coming from oil and gas
installations in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S.-led coalition has targeted Islamic State's financial infrastructure, using air strikes to reduce its ability to extract, refine and transport oil and so forcing fighters to reportedly take significant pay cuts.
Yet the militants, who seized a third of Iraq's territory and declared a caliphate in 2014, seem to be adapting again to this latest set of constraints, in some cases reviving previous profit-turning ventures like farming.
"The terrorists' current financing mechanism has changed from what it was before the announcement of the caliphate nearly two years ago," a report by Iraq's central court of investigation said, quoting Judge Jabbar Abid al-Huchaimi.
"After the armed forces took control of several oil fields Daesh was using to finance its operations, the organization devised non-traditional ways of paying its fighters and financing its activities," the report added, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
Fishing in hundreds of lakes north of Baghdad generates millions of dollars a month, according to the report. Some owners fleeing the area abandoned their farms while others agreed to cooperate with Islamic State to avoid being attacked.

Business Insider

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