MEASURING AND UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF TERRORISM

Both parties of the conflict are attacking each
other’s energy infrastructure in an attempt to
secure better terms, but neither one is willing
to destroy the other. 16
ISIL’s oil wealth depends on its ability to refine
and transport oil. As such, ISIL has built
underground pipelines, and rudimentary
stationary and mobile oil refineries. The
coalition forces have been targeting its
refineries and pipelines, destroying 16 mobile
refineries by the end of 2014. However ISIL
can rebuild a single mobile refinery in 10 days
for as little as US$230,000. 17
EXTORTION AND TAXES
Another source of income for ISIL comes
from taxing everyone and everything that
crosses its territories and from expropriating
real estate and property from those who fled.
ISIL already exercised a criminal hold on
Mosul long before seizing it. Prior to
capturing Mosul, ISIL members were acting
like “mafias managing organised crime and
controlling all economic resources of the
province”, according to an Iraqi
Parliamentary inquiry into what led to the
city’s fall. According to the report, ISIL made
US$11 million per month from organised
crime with an elaborate taxation system. It
collected money from different social groups
and levied taxes on everything. 18
In territories now under ISIL control, there is a
10 per cent income tax, 10-15 per cent tax on
business revenues, and a 2 per cent value
added tax on everyday purchases. There are
road taxes and custom taxes for vehicles
crossing ISIL held territory and taxes for
smuggling drugs and weapons. ISIL is also
profiting from “departure taxes” of up to
US$1,000 from those able to pay to leave ISIL
territory. Fearing that many will leave, ISIL
requires that civilians sign over car titles and
family homes in order to just to leave its
territory for two weeks. Christians are forced
to pay jiza, a religious levy or “protection tax,”
unless they convert to Islam.
Food crops are also a source of terrorist
financing. The UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation estimates that ISIL currently
controls over 40 per cent of Iraq’s wheat
cultivating land. It reported that ISIL extorts
farmers to pay “zakat” with portions of their
wheat and barley. ISIL also has control over
wheat silos, five major cement plants and a
phosphate mine.
ISIL has also gained money from pillaging
two state-owned banks in Mosul and over 90
private banks, worth an estimated US$500
million to a billion. The looting of Mosul’s
Central Bank netted approximately US$.425
million. 19 The US estimates that ISIL has
access to the equivalent of at least a half
billion dollars in cash alone. 20
ANTIQUITIES
ISIL has gained control over one of the richest
archaeological sites in the world, an
important source of income as well. Items
looted from al-Nabuk alone has earned ISIL
up to US$36 million. As sites such as Nimrud,
Nineveh and Hatra are being looted, a
growing number of artifacts are appearing in
global antiquity markets, black markets or on
Ebay. The Association for the Protection of
Syrian Archeology (APSA) has reported that
more than 900 monuments and archeological
sites have been looted, damaged or
completely destroyed.
This growing trade in antiquities has been
dubbed “blood antiques,” and while such
artifacts are more difficult to sell than “blood
diamonds,” they are far more valuable. The
US International Trade Commission has
reported that imports of ancient artifacts
from Iraq has increased fourfold from 2010
and 2014, reaching an estimated US$.
3.5 million Among items in demand are
ancient cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals,
jars, coins, glass and particularly mosaics.
Very few of the thousands of looted artifacts
from Iraq and Syria are likely to be
recovered. To date it is impossible to
quantify how much money ISIL is profiting
since it will take decades for these items to
reappear. As a point of reference,
Cambodian antiquities stolen during the civil
war turned up at an auction 40 years later.
Earlier this year the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) passed a resolution to
prohibit the trade in illegally removed
cultural materials.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING,
KIDNAPPING AND SMUGGLING
ISIL has committed a staggering number of
human rights abuses targeting entire
communities based on their religion or
ethnicity. The UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights reported
that ISIL had "the intent... to destroy the Yazidi
as a group," maintaining that ISIL may have
conducted genocide. 21 Abuse of children is
rampant. ISIL is systematically subjecting
children to indoctrination and grooming them
to be future militants while forcing them to
witness atrocities. ISIL‘s human rights abuses
has led to one of the greatest humanitarian
disasters of the 21st century, with thousands
being enslaved or murdered and creating
millions of IDPs, refugees and migrants.
Human rights abuses are an instrument of
terror and a source of revenue. In its online
publication Dabiq, ISIL has set out its
reasoning for upholding slavery of women
and girls who are bought and sold at “slave
auctions.” The Islamic State Research and
Fatwa Department recently established
guidelines for slavery, a lengthy how-to
manual justifying violence, and elevating
sexual assault as spiritually beneficial. While
the prices of slaves are quite low, family
members who are able to buy back their
children and wives pay ransoms as high as
US$3,000. 22
ISIL also has a special department dedicated
to kidnapping for ransom (KFR). Kidnapping
serves many purposes: as a source of income,
as a means to acquire wives for its fighters,
and as a tool to acquire new military recruits.
KFR also helps control media, as the threat of
KFR prevents many journalists from going to
ISIL controlled areas. 23 According to
Reporters without Borders, 181 journalists
have been killed in Syria since 2011.
Kidnapping generated US$ 45 million for ISIL
last year. 24 KFR is a complex business
operation. A special intelligence apparatus
within the ISIL relies on a network of
informers, spies, kidnappers, and jailers.
ISIL also attracts organised criminals who
harbor motives to attack Western targets.
Criminals with Russian connections operating
from Moldova have attempted selling cesium
in exchange for 2.5 million Euro in February
2015. This case represents the growing nexus
of crime and terror where criminal groups are
soliciting both ISIL and al Qa’ida as it is known
that these groups have expressed aspirations
of using weapons of mass destruction. 25
TECHNOLOGY AND CYBERCRIME
The threat from ISIL may be compounded by
the group’s apparent investment in
information and communications technology.
ISIL to date has not been able to conduct any
major cyber-attack. In early 2015, hackers
claiming to be with ISIL released a video
threatening cyber-attacks against the US,
Europe, and Australia. At the same time, ISIL
defaced the CENTCOM website and posted
the names and addresses of US troops on
Twitter and urged followers in the US to kill
them. So far ISIL has been focused mostly on
strategic messaging using such applications
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