Defeating the Islamic State: A Financial-Military Strategy

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Through oil smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking and extortion, ISIL is one best funded militant groups United States has Avoiding a protracted conflict with ISIS requires a more integrated financial and military strategy to undermine group's territorial control and reach. ********** Overshadowed by debate over whether Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) constitutes a state, Islamic or otherwise, and discussion of strategy to degrade and destroy is pivotal role criminality plays in its rise to power. ISIL includes criminals in its ranks and participates in a range of criminal activities to maintain and expand its territory. ISIL's ranks are swollen with criminals released by Syrian President Bashar Assad; its membership includes Sunni ex-convicts freed from prisons when ISIL captured Iraqi towns and cities. (1) In addition, ISIL participates in a number of criminal activities to generate illicit profit. Rather than relying solely on support from wealthy donors in Gulf countries, ISIL generates bulk of its money from criminal activities such as extortion, robbery, kidnapping, trafficking and smuggling. (2) According to one report, it netted $8 million in extortion rackets even prior to group's capture of Mosul. (3) Meanwhile, group generated between $1 million to $2 million per day in profit from oil fields it captured. (4) With massing of such wealth, US Treasury Department believes, but for the important exception of some state-sponsored terrorist organizations, ISIL is probably best-funded terrorist organization we have confronted. (5) By relying on criminal enterprises, ISIL has made itself into a highly adaptable and resilient organization not easily swept from battlefield. By perpetrating criminal acts, ISIL easily earns money for weapons, training, and recruitment and does not depend on significant sponsorship by an external state. It is not reliant on moving illicit money across international borders through established financial institutions, thus insulating itself from many traditional financial countermeasures such as economic sanctions, asset seizures, and clamping down on sympathetic charities. Such insulation means ISIL can use illicit schemes to fund its current operations and potentially extend its fight into other regions. (6) Due to significant role that crime plays in ISIL's power, Unites States requires a more integrated financial and military strategy to undermine group's territorial control and reach. ISIL and Crime Management Like other insurgent and terrorist organizations, ISIL has had to determine its relationship to crime in territory it controls. Crime management is essential to remain both a viable fighting force and a plausible alternative authority structure. Other insurgent groups such as FARC, Sendero Luminoso, Taliban and United Wa State Army that have gained territory have managed their relationship with crime through a mixture of confrontation, cooptation and cooperation. ISIL is proving no different. In its expansion, ISIL has followed a number of steps to confront criminality in territory it has acquired. First, it removed local police force and judiciary by killing some of them while forcing any remaining Sunni to swear obedience to group. Second, ISIL announced harshest form of sharia law is enshrined code of conduct. After completion of these steps, ISIL's final move has been to demonstrate its authority by having newly vetted police and courts mete out lashings, amputations and executions depending on severity of crime.' Other militant groups like IRA and FLN have sought to confront crime by assassinating police and establishing underground legal codes in areas where they operated, while other groups like FARC and Taliban have sought to impose new institutional frameworks for law enforcement and judiciary directly. …