Beating ISIL at the bank
Recent weeks have brought welcome news from the Middle East. The Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant (ISIL) has been on the retreat. Local forces, backed by coalition air power, have liberated a series of communities that had previously fallen under ISIL control, including Sinjar and Ramadi. Iraqi security forces, again backed up by Western planes and special forces units ( including Canada’s own modest contributions) have defeated attempts at assaults. In Syria, though Russia’s entry into that country’s civil war has complicated life for the West in any number of ways, the bolstered regime of Syrian President Bashar al- Assad has, if nothing else, been able to stand firm against ISIL, where before it may have retreated ( if only Russian forces were as interested in bombing ISIL as they are about hitting Assad’s other opponents). This is good news.
But a recent report may have even better news. The Middle East Forum, an American think tank, recently obtained and translated several apparently authentic ISIL internal documents. One of the revelations contained therein was that ISIL has been forced to cut, drastically, the salaries it pays its soldiers. ISIL’s infantry has in fact had its pay cut by as much as 50 per cent.
No military force ever wants to slash funding for its troops in wartime. When you consider the recent battlefield defeats and constant attacks ISIL faces from Western air power and drones, plus Russia’s less accurate but enthusiastic aircrew, morale among ISIL soldiers can be presumed to be low — and this is the greatest opportunity we’ve yet had for a major breakthrough.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Western world has become quite good at shutting down terrorist financing. AlQaida’s great defeats weren’t on Afghan battlefields, but in frozen accounts and arrested financiers.
ISIL poses different challenges. There is, of course, a degree of international fundraising. Wherever possible, that should be interdicted and shut down. But al- Qaida was far more dependent on such revenue sources than ISIL is. Indeed, much of the group’s initial funding was simply seized from the territories it conquered; the group literally robbed banks and shook down the occupied populations. That left it briefly flush with cash, but that money can’t last forever (and having seized no significant new territories of late, the group has had no new banks to rob).
The group has also taken to taxing occupied populations, and selling oil it has seized from captured wells on the black market. These sources of funding are harder to attack. There is little the West or its local allies can do to stop the flow of funds from captive local populations to ISIL, especially considering how brutally the group metes out discipline. The seized oil is also problematic: though ISIL masquerades as a state, it is, in the eyes of the West, a hostile occupying force that has seized the lands of sovereign countries.
Bombing oil wells in Iraq and Syria would certainly hurt ISIL today. But it would also make it harder for future Iraqi and Syrian governments to rebuild their economies, and societies. Such political and economic weakness is a large part of what allowed ISIL to rise up in the first place. (One should also not take lightly the environmental consequences of dropping high explosives on oil wells — recall the plumes of thick, black smoke that blanketed the Middle East after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s destruction of Kuwait’s oil wells in 1991.)
Still, the efforts must be made. The best way to cut off ISIL’s taxation base is to liberate the cities they hold. If the oil wells themselves cannot be destroyed, the West can certainly target any vehicles attempting to transport oil away from them, and the supporting infrastructure can be targeted while sparing the actual wells. Every effort should be made to crack down on foreign donations.
ISIL will not be nickel and dimed i nto defeat. There will still need to be a military solution, and that will require ground troops ( Western or otherwise). But a bankrupted and demoralized enemy, which is struggling to recruit new fighters, is a much easier target than one that is flush with cash and contented soldiers. Beating ISIL on the ground will start with beating them at the bank.