Special to WorldTribune.com

By Norman Bailey

The barbaric conquests of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) are financed by collaborators among the business and financial circles of the West.

There has been in recent years a growing synergy between the worshipers of MOLOCH (death and destruction) in the Middle East, as exemplified by Iran, Al Qaida, the Taliban, ISIL and all their clones and proxies, and the worshipers of MAMMON (wealth and greed) in the West.

There is nothing new in this, of course. Lenin is famous for writing, about the Western business community, “They [the capitalists] will sell us the rope with which to hang them,” to which I would add “They will lend us the money to buy the rope with which to hang them.” Currently, however, this phenomenon has expanded considerably.

Take ISIL as an example. That savage and barbaric organization has plenty of money with which to finance its horrible conquests as well as its propaganda and outreach to Muslim communities throughout the region as well as in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Where does this financing come from? Apparently primarily from two sources: funds seized from banks in the cities it has overrun, especially Mosul in Iraq, and from the sale of crude oil and products from the oil fields and refineries it has seized.

But banks nowadays don’t hold hundreds of millions of dollars in banknotes and crude oil and products are good only to lubricate engines unless there are buyers as well as ways to get the products to the buyers.

In other words, the funds of the banks can be obtained for use to pay its terrorist hordes and for other purposes only through the cooperation of other correspondent banks. As for the oil, buyers are readily found in the West and tanker trucks are permitted to reach ports where oil tankers are waiting to load it.

All this requires ready, willing and able collaborators among the business and financial circles of the West as well as surrounding countries.

This is not the place to name names, but the buyers and the facilitators and the financiers are not that difficult to identify, so that if the opponents of ISIL were really serious about doing something about it, along with the occasional bombing raid, the ISIL could be starved of funds to continue its rampage of murder, destruction, rape and slavery.

After years of building a sanctions regime that was truly effective in depriving Iran of necessary funds (along with a falling oil price), Iran turned to diplomacy, eagerly accepting the six-power talks, in which it easily outmaneuvered its all-too-willing counterparts.

Now the sanctions are collapsing as the business communities of France, Germany, Russia, China and many other countries rush to Tehran with indecent haste to make deals.

ISIL doesn’t even have to negotiate. It has had no trouble finding collaborators among the worshipers of MAMMON, in order to pursue the thousands of bloody sacrifices demanded by MOLOCH.

Norman A. Bailey, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor of Economic Statecraft at The Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C., and a researcher at the Center for National Security Studies, University of Haifa. This column was also published by Globes, the Israeli business daily.

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