How to Cut Off ISIS Terror Tycoons
It’s the only self-funding terrorist organization in history and it does business with U.S. ‘allies.’ How can ISIS’s money machine be stopped?
No American official was impolite enough to say it publicly at this week’s U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York, but Western frustration is building with Turkey’s reluctance to fulfill a forward-leaning role in the fight against the militants of the ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State (IS). And with the Security Council agreeing Wednesday on an anti-terror resolution requiring member states to target funding for terror groups, pressure is likely to mount on Ankara.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has come under fire from political opponents for not doing enough to stanch the flow of foreign fighters traveling through Turkey to join the jihadis in Iraq and Syria, told reporters this week in New York that his government would give military or logistical support to U.S.-led airstrikes against insurgents from the Islamic State.
But of equal importance for Washington’s anti-jihadist strategy is for Turkey to help stem money laundering and to stop traders in Turkey buying smuggled oil from the Islamic State.
For years, Ankara has fallen foul of international money-laundering agreements, and despite passing a law last year aimed at preventing the financing of terrorism, Turkey remains on a global list of uncooperative countries. It languishes on what is known as the gray list overseen by the Financial Action Task Force, an inter-governmental body. There are 13 other countries on the list, including Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Iraq.
The G7-founded body, which is tasked with implementing global standards to counter illicit financing, says Turkey has a weak framework for identifying and freezing terrorist assets. With the U.S. gunning for ISIS and determined to hit its funding, Turkey will be pushed to play its part on hitting the militants in their wallets.
From racking in millions in ransom money for Western hostages to trafficking in rare antiquities looted from museums and archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq, militants of ISIS have turned their jihad into a cash cow and become terror tycoons. Analysts say they are the world’s first self-funding terrorist organization and, unlike al Qaeda, don’t need to go cap-in-hand to wealthy sympathizers in the Gulf—although they don’t say “no” when offered donations.