Who Bankrolls the Islamic State? Private Donors in Gulf Oil States Cited as Key to ISIS Success...

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Militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State have reportedly abducted at least 220 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria during a three-day offensive. Meanwhile, the Islamic State militant nicknamed "Jihadi John," who has been featured in several beheading videos, has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born former resident of London. In other news, two U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in Iraq, including at least 20 civilians. Also this week, UNESCO is has condemned the Islamic State for destroying the Mosul public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. UNESCO described the incident as "one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history." Earlier today, video was posted online that appears to show members of the Islamic State smashing ancient artifacts inside a Mosul museum. The video shows men toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C. Live from Iraq, we are joined by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book is "The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution."

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Why don’t we go right to the headline of that piece, Patrick? Talk about who is funding the self-proclaimed Islamic State?

PATRICK COCKBURN: It looks as though the Islamic State has much more money than it ought to have. It’s raised certainly 100,000, and getting on over 200,000, soldiers. They’re all being paid. It’s introduced conscription. It recently lowered the age of conscription below 18. If you join up, you don’t get much. You get $400 a month. If you’re a foreign fighter, you’ll get $800 a month and your keep. But this is a pretty large army they’re putting in the field, and they don’t have many sources of revenue. They have some oil. They have some taxes. So, there’s a great big gap there, which senior Kurdish officials and officials in Baghdad have told me they’re convinced come from private donors in the oil states of the Gulf. That’s the only real explanation for that.

more: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/26/who_is_bankrolling_the_islamic_state

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1. The Pentagon said the same thing last week - ISIS donors now are the major source of funding.

The vast majority of ISIS finance still comes from wealthy donors in the Gulf States, the ones who financed AQ, the Taliban, and every other major armed Sunni group before and now. They continue to be treated as untouchable. Too rich to bomb. Please see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026192755