U.S. official: Assad regime buying bulk of ISIL oil, some going to Turkey

Special to WorldTribune.com

While Russia’s claim that Turkey is obtaining oil from Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) may be true, the Assad regime that Russia is backing is buying up far larger amounts of ISIL’s crude, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

“ISIL is selling a great deal of oil to the Assad regime,” Adam Szubin, the department’s acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told an audience at Chatham House in London on Dec. 10.

Trucks near oil fields in Syria's northeastern Qamshli province. ISIL is said to control six out of Syria's 10 main oil fields. /Reuters
Trucks near oil fields in Syria’s northeastern Qamshli province. ISIL is said to control six out of Syria’s 10 main oil fields. /Reuters

Syria and ISIL “are trying to slaughter each other and they are still engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade,” Szubin said, adding that the “far greater amount” of ISIL oil ends up under Syrian President Bashar Assad’s control while some is consumed internally in ISIL-controlled areas, some ends up in Kurdish regions and “some is coming across the border into Turkey.”

Szubin said ISIL has made more than $500 million from crude oil sales. The terror organization, though, has several other methods of obtaining cash.

ISIL raises millions each week from taxes on people within its areas of control, and further pads its coffers through outright extortion of businesses, local government and civilian workers, according to Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the Rand Corp.

“ISIL raises much of its money just as a well-organized criminal gang would do; it smuggles, it extorts, it skims, it fences, it kidnaps and it shakes down,” Shatz wrote in a blog post.

The Treasury Department said ISIL in the past year raised as much as $20 million from kidnapping alone.

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