The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Thursday aiming to cut off funding sources of the Islamic State extremist group by strengthening the sanctions regime focusing on the group.
Advertisement
As Daesh (another name for ISIL) and other terrorist groups disseminate their hateful propaganda and ratchet up murderous attacks, we must join forces to prevent them from acquiring and deploying resources to do further harm, he stressed.
Daesh has been the subject of Security Council sanctions since mid-2013 under its “Al-Qaida Sanctions List”.
Lew, chair of Thursday’s meeting because the United States is the council president for December, said Islamic State had reaped an estimated $500 million from black-market oil sales and “millions more from the people it brutalizes and extorts”.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, described that prospect as “the first, very high profile way that the Security Council would show its unity around the importance of achieving a political settlement” and routing the Islamic State.
The draft Security Council resolution, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press news agency, would rename the committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaeda as “the ISIL and al-Qaeda sanctions committee”.
“I know that might sound mundane but in the counter-terrorist financing arena, that [information-sharing] is where the rubber meets the road”, Szubin argued, adding that, “It is about when banks see a suspicious transaction, are they flagging that for financial authorities”.
The U.S. official said getting at IS’ revenue is a serious challenge because much of it is internally generated from oil and gas sales which have the potential to generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually as well as from taxation and extortion.
ISIL controls parts of Syria and Iraq, including oil and gas fields.
The resolution requires countries to increase their efforts to choke off funding to the terrorist group, which has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq and is looking to expand its stronghold in Libya.
The resolution calls for a report within 120 days on what every country is doing to tackle the financing of IS and al-Qaida.
The text also calls on countries “to move vigorously and decisively to cut the flows of funds and other financial assets and economic resources to individuals and entities” on the sanctions list.
It also asks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to provide an initial “strategic-level report” in 45 days on IS financing, as well as its planning of attacks, and to provide updates every four months.
What vexes the United States and Russian Federation is not just their own differences about the future of Syria, but the rival agendas of their allies in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran.
Advertisement
Writing in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, UK Chancellor George Osborne and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said isolating IS from the global financial system “must be a key element of any comprehensive strategy to degrade and ultimately destroy it”.
