A break from China this week and a detailed look at how ISIL funds itself from the Financial Action Task Force in a report from February.
I thought I’d just skim this document and cherry-pick points on how to avoid being involved with terrorist financing. I discovered it instead to be a page-turner. Extensive details of their regime are clinically analyzed and if you take the time you, I’m sure as I did, will find it hard to believe this is the same world in which we live?
Human trafficking? Check. Theft? On an unbelievable scale. Protection rackets? Multiple levels. Theft and rent back of farming equipment? Good game. Kidnapping for ransom? Of course. Looting of cultural artifacts? Systematic. Crowd sourcing? Where possible; and all this is what’s known to be happening. Goodness only knows what’s going on that we don’t?
At the end of the report though (in a curious way) I was encouraged. If their finances rely as heavily on theft, intimidation and brutality as the research suggests, their regime is sure to fail. Good may often take time to triumph over evil but history teaches us bad economics, which is what their regime is built on, leads to the sure collapse of even the most oppressive systems. For those presently suffering under their control let’s hope this process progresses to it’s inevitable conclusion as fast as possible.
Happy Sunday
[You can access the full report at http://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/Financing-of-the-terrorist-organisation-ISIL.pdf]