The Islamic extremist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) generates about $1 million to $2 million a day from oil smuggling, organized crime, and donations from
wealthy sympathizers in countries including Qatar and Kuwait, CNN reports.
The organization, which is trying to create a separate Islamic state, or caliphate, has caused growing alarm for its atrocities, which include beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers.
Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C., said ISIS is "the best-financed group we've ever seen," CNN reported.
ISIS demands money for all sorts of activities in territories it controls, including operating a business or using a highway.
"There are reports that people in Mosul (Iraq) who want to take money out of their own bank accounts need to make a 'voluntary' — not so voluntary — donation to the Islamic State, to ISIS," Levitt said, according to CNN. "So controlling territory has given them opportunities that other groups like al-Qaida, who haven't controlled real territory, haven't had."
Because most of ISIS' money comes from the territories it overtakes, stemming the group’s financial support is difficult, said Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the Rand Corp.
“It smuggles, it extorts, it skims, it fences, it kidnaps and it shakes down. Although supposedly religiously inspired, its actions are more like those of an organized criminal cult,”
Shatz wrote for the New York Daily News.
Twitter users express concern about funding for ISIS.
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