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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