But in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, many are asking why the U.S.is not in a bigger hurry. They came after the Obama administration found and quietly fixed a colossal miscalculation.
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The colonel noted that Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top US commander in charge of the anti-ISIS campaign, approved the operation, which was named after a World War II mission-Operation Tidal Wave, carried out against Nazi oil fields in Romania in August 1943.
ISIS controls more than 60 percent of Syria’s oil production capacity and about 10 percent of Iraq’s oil production capacity, Reuters estimates.
It is fascinating that radical groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in numerous Islamic countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey, openly preach hate against the West to Muslims in the very Western societies, including Australia, which have allowed them the space to practise that freedom.
In the debate broadcast on November 14 by CBS, the candidates eagerly embraced increasing US engagement and called for the absolute defeat of the terrorist group in the wake of its terrorist attacks in Paris the previous night. In the past, Islamic State has been able to fix oil facilities damaged in air strikes in as little as 24 hours.
The leaflet states: “Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them”. In any case, $500 million buys a lot of $500 black-market AK-47s.
In northern Syria, the United States has deployed special operations forces to work with Kurdish militias and their Arab partners to fight ISIS.
Once a major source of revenue for the Syrian government, proceeds from oil sales were sharply curtailed in 2011 following the imposition of sanction by its European customers.
ELIZABETH ROSENBERG: These are well-established smuggling networks that are decades old. Davis said the coalition had determined that more needed to be done to inhibit the Islamic State’s generation of oil revenues in Syria and Iraq.
But the group’s origins stretch back much further.
“Nobody wants this to be another Baiji”, one U.S. official said, referring to the disputed Iraqi oil refinery that has been rendered unusable by US-led strikes and bombings. He and other experts say that strategy missed an important shift: Militants increasingly sell raw crude to truckers and middlemen, rather than refining it themselves.
Pentagon officials also acknowledge that for more than a year they avoided striking tanker trucks to limit civilian casualties. “None of these guys are ISIS”.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker advised the House Armed Services Committee to “establish in the eyes of our allies and adversaries that we are engaged and we are engaged for the long term”, when dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the Middle East. Last Friday’s attacks demonstrated the financial resources available to ISIS, most of which comes from selling oil on the black market to independent traders.
The taxes bring in real money.
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Its control of an expansive territory obviously gives the Islamic State a valuable source of funding and flexibility. The US price tag: $5 billion since August 2014, an average of $11.1 million each day. ISIS sells crude to the regime, to anti-Assad rebels, even indirectly to global aid agencies because often it’s the only oil available. And how do you conduct airstrikes on farm fields? The Islamic State will hold together its “state”, and its counterattacks – as well as Iranian-Russian exploitation of the Islamic State for their own aggression – will destabilize much of Eurasia and expose the United States again to mass terrorist attacks. But the oil revenue alone could likely pay those salaries nearly two times over, Bahney says. Payments were resumed after Iraqi central bankers warned that they were running out of cash, the newspaper reported.
