When US officials term ISIS the “world’s richest terrorist organization,” they’re not being hyperbolic. The group really is raking in huge amounts of money through its various sidelines, with Treasury officials saying they believe it amounts to tens of millions of dollars monthly.
ISIS has found myriad sources of revenue, from sales of oil wealth and ransom schemes to the age old practice of taxation, and that’s not even counting the $400+ million they looted from the Iraqi central bank in Mosul.
Like most terrorists, ISIS started out dependent on the largesse of a handful of supporters, and the group continues to run a surprisingly successful campaign soliciting donations through social media. Large donations have been reported out of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait.
But as those nations try to close the spigot on the direct donations, it matters less and less for ISIS, which as a de facto nation state now has natural resources to exploit and millions of civilians to tax to pay for its assorted military adventures. As the US and others have shown in the past, that’s a strategy that can keep wars going for quite some time.
ISIS is NUMBER 2 on the list of 'richest' (terrorist) nations.
USG has held the NUMBER 1 spot for the past 70 years.
No i think both the communists and the national socialists had the US government beat for some time .
USG loans and investments helped bankroll the Nazi party
leading up to WW2. Prescott Bush, and US ambassador to
Britain, Joe Kennedy, panhandled for Hitler. USG loans and
armaments also helped Stalin fend off invasion from his Nazi
pals, who broke the German-USSR pact of 1939.
"ISIS Generates Tens of Millions of Dollars Monthly"
ISIS GENERATES tens of millions of dollars monthly? We really need to get some advice from them because our military wastes tens of BILLIONS of dollars monthly.
Man — Can he save God from evil?
Our corporate rich having now encountered a brutal imperialism akin to their own, will this finally motivate them to give up Empire building and turn toward the good?
Problem is, never in world history has an Empire ever given up it’s power and plunder, surely a greater power has always been needed to get the job done.
So , it ‘s the Western Christian nations against the Middle-East Muslim nations, with both sides under the delusion that nature’s deity is so weak that he needs man to fight his battles for him.
"control the oil and use taxation to fund your war plans" Seems like ISIS learned well from its long-time backer, the Good Ol' U.S. of A.