Boldly Advancing Where Others Have Stalled
"The Islamic State is far more advanced in using the full range of media to advance its ideology than any previous movement. The group has sophistication and strategic communications that we haven't seen before."
"The countermeasures are obviously ones designed to be recommended on an international level. The report [UN Security Council report] doesn't talk about military operations, doesn't talk about aid, doesn't talk about dealing with Syrian rebels or how to aid Iraq, and these are all areas where a UN report wouldn't get into detail. It's not for the kind of military measures the U.S. and its allies are caught up in."
"When you talk about degrading or destroying the Islamic State, if you can't address the broader problem of extremism and violence in the region, then getting rid of one movement to have it replaced by another is scarcely going to be a positive step." *
Anthony Cordesman, chair in strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies
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| Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham -- Photo: Associated Press |
"What the report hammers home is that these guys — the Islamic State certainly and al Nusra to a smaller extent — are better resourced than adversaries we've faced in the past. They have a little more meat on the bones."
"They are not so vulnerable that we can squeeze one asset and they'll fold. Their portfolio is diversified enough." *
llan Berman, vice-president, American Foreign Policy Council
According to Colleen Curry writing for VICE News online and interpreting the UN report, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham is profiting from their various enterprises at a staggering rate. Earning from their Iraq- and Syrian-seized oil fields a veritable harvest of funding. From fields located within the broad sweep of their Islamic State between $850,000 and $1.6-million each and every day from fields around Mosul alone. The crude transported through pipelines and helpful tankers to receiving countries such as Turkey where the black market receives roughly 47,000 barrels per day coming in at $18 to $35 each barrel.
Diversification of activities and assets means just that; reliant not only on purloined oil revenues but from the time-honoured ploy of belligerent assertiveness where the bullying occupying powers-that-be extort protection money or 'taxation' within the uneasy confines of conquered territories revenues to the value of "several million" each month from local businesses. And then there are the profits to be realized with the sale or priceless looted objects to unscrupulous buyers/collectors of museum-looted antiquities; those taken from territories in their thrall and from pillaging archaeological sites.
And nor lest we overlook yet another source of pain and grief to some and triumphant exploitation to others, the ransom payouts from those countries in Europe, excluding Britain, willing to pay millions to bring their nationals back home -- out of the misery that abduction and incarceration complete with torture and starvation, privation and ill health -- compassion benefiting their captors enormously. Those, like the United States and United Kingdom, unwilling to do business with terrorist jihadis can view videos instead for entertainment; first those videos where their nationals plead for their lives in vain, then the following ones demonstrating just how pleasurable it is for their captors to send their victims to their makers.
The report makes detailed mention of the serendipity of demoralized and terrorized state militias abandoning their posts, leaving behind the enormous cache of latest-technology weapons for the enterprising Islamic State jihadis, a treasure-trove of armoured vehicles, missiles, explosives and all manner of other conflict-geared weaponry dear to the hearts of men-at-war: assault rifles, machine guns, man-portable air defense systems, field and anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rockets, rocket launchers, artillery, aircraft, tanks and high-mobility multi-purpose military vehicles. No need to rub an Alladin's lamp to have their dearest wishes fulfilled.
The improvised explosive devices so dear to the hearts of the Taliban fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan have undergone various interpretations. No lack of enterprise and innovation when conflict-happy warriors of Islam, anxious to become martyrs congregate in a part of the world distinguished most particularly for its tribal, sectarian and just plain bad-tempered pathologies of rage, revenge-hatred and vengeance-blood-letting. Since Islamist states themselves espouse traditional conventions of capital punishment by beheading miscreants whose unspeakable crimes such as abandoning Islam or slandering their ruling sheikhs/royalty, Islamic State's disposal of those who are of no use to them is entirely credible.
*VICE News
Labels: Armaments, Conflict, Intervention, Islamic State, Jihad, Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 21, 2014
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