U.S. Treasury says Turkey is still logistical hub for Islamic State financing
The Islamic State (ISIS) continues to rely on “logistical hubs” inside Turkey for its finances, the U.S. Treasury said in a new report released on ISIS finances in early January.
According to the report, ISIS “often gathered and sent funds to intermediaries in Turkey who smuggle the cash into Syria or send the funds to hawalas operating in the camp.”
Ankara’s relations with ISIS has been a controversial issue for a long time, and while Turkish officials have claimed that Turkey was the only country that fought against the group as much as it did, observers disagree.
When the United States launched a raid into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province and assassinated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, the newly appointed National Security Council’s Middle East and North Africa coordinator Brett McGurk wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, pointing out that al-Baghdadi’s hideout was near a large Turkish military post, and that Ankara had “some explaining to do.” Then-president Donald Trump thanked Syrian Kurds “for certain support they were able to give us” for the same operation.
The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been praised for its fierce fight against ISIS for years, while Turkish forces have been fighting against the SDF since 2016 in northern Syria.
ISIS “probably has as much as $100 million available in cash reserves dispersed across the region,” wrote Audit Director Gregory Sullivan in a Treasury report written on Jan. 4. However, he added, the U.S. government didn’t know the amount of money ISIS distributed during this quarter.
Ambassador McGurk, during a televised interview in January 2019, said U.S. officials spent most of their time in Ankara, because “most of the material coming to fuel the ISIS machine, frankly, was coming from across the border from Turkey into Syria … It was very frustrating because Turkey didn’t take much action on the border.”
The report also indicated that ISIS supporters increasingly used cryptocurrencies, while still relying on “traditional methods of transferring funds into Iraq and Syria. ISIS members in Iraq transferred funds to ISIS members in northeastern Syria, including in Internally Displaced Persons camps, such as al-Hawl.”
The summary was submitted in response to inquiries from the U.S. Department of Defence’s Lead Inspector General. The report said ISIS continued to raise funds through extortion of oil smuggling networks in eastern Syria, kidnapping for ransom, targeting civilian businesses and populations, looting, and possibly the operation of front companies. ISIS also continued to use networks of couriers to smuggle cash between Iraq and Syria.
The paper was first published by Thomas Joscelyn, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in January and said that the Trump administration sold its Feb. 29, 2020, agreement with the Taliban as a victory for America’s counterterrorism efforts. Despite supposed assurances that the Taliban would break with al Qaeda, however, the Treasury Department’s analysts found that the two remained closely allied, according to the latest summary.
Same report said that al Qaeda had been “gaining strength in Afghanistan while continuing to operate with the Taliban under the Taliban’s protection” in 2020.
Source: Ahval News
