Maintain its start as the world s most affluent terrorist organization. I. S. I. L. s got a ready source of revenue that does not depend as much on a donor network, does not depend on countries that give you money through the back door. Theyve got a bit of a business going. Slu absolutely. They have always been that way. Right now their revenue portfolio includes oil as you said and then also ex tors and extortion and taxation much as a state would do. Ransom, a major part of their revenue . Ransom has always been a nontrivial but small part of it. Nothing compared to extortion, oil, money they stole from banks whether they took over cities throughout iraq and syria. You have estimated last year that i. S. I. L. Produced over 150,000 barrels of oil a day, thats huge. That amount has changed significantly since then. Whats their current production load and whats the best way to cut into that revenue stream . So the best estimates of currently production are around 30 to 40,000 barrels p
Shatz is a senior economist at the think tank rand, studied organizational structure ever i. S. I. L. When it was still known as al qaeda in iraq. Why its able to maintain its start as the world s most affluent terrorist organization. I. S. I. L. s got a ready source of revenue that does not depend as much on a donor network, does not depend on countries that give you money through the back door. Theyve got a bit of a business going. Slu absolutely. They have always been that way. Right now their revenue portfolio includes oil as you said and then also ex tors and extortion and taxation much as a state would do. Ransom, a major part of their revenue . Ransom has always been a nontrivial but small part of it. Nothing compared to extortion, oil, money they stole from banks whether they took over cities throughout iraq and syria. You have estimated last year that i. S. I. L. Produced over 150,000 barrels of oil a day, thats huge. That amount has changed significantly since then. Whats the
With respect to safe zones, we have thought about that. Ive thought about that a great deal. Ill begin and describe the concept of a safe zone would be to create a patch of syria that wearing people who are inclined to go there could go there and be protected. They would need to be protected because you can foresee that at least isil and other radical groups, and quite possibly elements of the assad regime would undertake to prove that it wasnt safe. And so it would have to be made safe and that takes us back to the question of whats and appropriate force of that size to protect a zone of that size . In our estimate it is substantial, and again i dont see as much as i wish otherwise offering to furnish that for us. I also think we have thought about who might want to reside such a zone. I think would be undesirable if you became a place into which people were pushed, say, from turkey or europe, expelled so to speak into this zone. I dont know what people who now live in the zone we thi
Lets start with iraq. Some of the ways that our different with metrics with one example henry work with the Iraqi Government and they know the support meeting certain conditions. But just to recapture what we spoke about today special Operations Forces the expeditionary target is in a different way that foreign fighter initiative taking place over the past couple of weeks with the state department and department of defense hohmann security and fbi is the different way to approach that challenge. And with though will to recognize our important it is as a more comprehensive approach to go after those revenue sources. Trying to piece it together to have the Expeditionary Targeting force without going into too much detail, what does this mean . A form of iraqi soldiers, as special forces, what is this . It was thrown on us today so what are reconditioning envisioning . I do want to avoid some detail but it is a force either american only or more likely a mixed force. To give you two exampl
To do that . Congressman, again, i dont know what the thought process was six or eight months ago. I do know we have a much better appreciation for the resources of isil. In august i went around to all the regions, i was in transition, to get a better sense of isil. At that time there wasnt a clear understanding of how isis i will was generating revenue. Even in the weeks subsequent to august, we started to have a much better appreciation for the source of isil revenue. We started to go after the Oil Infrastructure and the tankers because we then appreciated how much of an impact that would have. I guess in the same vein, it looked like the french targets, the first targets they hit, seemed to be targets we should have hit right off the bat. Is that all changed now, are we in a new paradigm . I got the monday morning quarterbacking analogy, but are we in a position to hit everything that makes sense from a military standpoint . I can assure you, congressman, that the answer to that que