military contractors from Iraq by the end of 2011.
The new Obama administration actually reopened the withdrawal plan, trying to convince Iraq to allow up to 20,000 US troops to remain, but the negotiations foundered over the question of impunity. Prime Minister al-Maliki was reportedly in favour of keeping US troops in Iraq beyond the deadlines. But Iraq refused to grant Washington’s demand that US troops be assured of absolute immunity for any war crimes they might commit, and without that impunity, presumably knowing that US troops would certainly continue to commit war crimes, the US refused to keep any troops in Iraq.
The repression by the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government increased, the Sunni uprising escalated, and full-scale sectarian war resumed, with US participation through the end of 2011 and without the US starting in 2012. War continued, and ISIS played a major role in the sectarian battle. Under US pressure, in August 2014 al-Maliki was replaced by another politician from the same Shi’a party.
New prime minister Haider al-Abadi talked a more inclusive line, including announcing that his government would stop bombing Sunni communities, but he did little to change the sectarian practices of the military and police agencies, and thus the sectarian pressures continued. Sunni former generals, Sunni tribal leaders and others continued to resist the repression. Many of them continued their alliance with ISIS, seeing it as the strongest opposition to the US-backed government. Using a combination of conventional military tactics and the brutality it had become known for, including kidnappings, beheadings and sex slavery, ISIS fought against both Iraqi government forces and civilians: Shi’a, Christians, Yazidis, even Sunnis who did not accept its extremist interpretation of Islam. The Sunni revolt continued even as ISIS moved to consolidate its seizure of land and expansion into Syria, which would define the regional war for years to come.
Whatever the beliefs and intentions of ISIS leadership, its revival and renewed Sunni support – which made possible its rapid success within the Sunni revolt in Iraq – were directly linked to the continuing sectarian marginalization and repression against Sunnis by the US-backed and Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad. So the origins and rise of ISIS stem from the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, not the belated withdrawal of US troops.
Where does ISIS get its money from?
Along with selling oil it produces from oilfields and refineries in territories it has seized, ISIS relies on several other sources of funding, including taxes levied on businesses within, and transporting of goods in and out of, cities, towns, and areas under its control. As ISIS consolidated its governance in northern Syria and western Iraq after declaring itself the Islamic State ‘caliphate’ in 2014, it began to operate as if it were an actual government. While some of this was purely for appearances, ISIS did begin to issue commercial, building, and drivers’ licences to carry out at least the basics of running public utilities, the operation of schools and medical facilities, and to collect taxes.
Taxes took the form of official-sounding taxes that any government might assess for commercial or other actions, as well as straight-up extortion. That reportedly included ISIS skimming money off the top of salary funds the Iraqi government is still paying to civil service workers in ISIS-occupied Mosul. Since ISIS took control of the central bank in Mosul, the salaries of government workers have been paid in cash picked up weekly by emissaries from the occupied city who meet directly with Iraqi government officials outside of Mosul.
ISIS has also gained hundreds of thousands, if not millions, as ransom from the families, businesses or governments of its kidnapping victims. While the US and Britain maintain staunch ‘no payment of ransom’ positions and have seen numerous US and British nationals killed by ISIS (as well as by other extremist organizations), various European, Asian, and other countries – both governments and companies – have brought their people home after quietly paying ransoms generally far lower than those demanded for American or British citizens.
Then there is the massive funding, by some reports second only to oil income, accruing to ISIS from sales of plundered ancient artifacts, putting the historical legacy of Syria and to some degree Iraq at even greater risk. The human rights section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science took satellite images in 2014 that, according to a scholar on the project, ‘show the destruction of ancient artifacts, architecture, and most importantly, archaeological context that is the record of humanity’s past. From the origins of civilization to the first international empires, Syria’s cultural heritage and these sites in particular are vitally important to our understanding of history.’ Some of those looted artifacts are being sold to collectors and dealers in the US. According to a February 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation, ‘in the US alone, government data show the value of declared antiques imported from Syria jumped 134 per cent in 2013 to $11 million. US officials estimate the value of undeclared pieces is many multiples higher.’
And ISIS is not the only force threatening Syria’s cultural treasure. The Journal article reports that ‘video published by a Syrian opposition media network on YouTube shows soldiers fighting for President Bashar al-Assad ’s regime at Palmyra with delicate grave reliefs loaded onto a truck. And senior Free Syrian Army fighters, the secular opposition that has received aid from the US, have long conceded to Western media that looting antiquities is an important source of funding.’
In early 2015, the United Nations Security Council passed a series of resolutions aimed at choking off sources of funding for ISIS as well as other extremist organizations including the al-Nusra Front. The Council condemned the purchase of oil from those organizations. But although it passed the resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which can authorize the use of force, it did little to bring real pressure on the global oil market to stop the trade, threatening only to send any violators to the UN Sanctions Committee for possible listing as a violator of UN sanctions. It called on all UN member states to freeze the assets of people who commit terrorist acts, and to ‘take appropriate steps to prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and other items of… historical, cultural, rare scientific and religious importance illegally removed from Iraq since 6 August 1990 [when the first resolution aimed at protecting Iraqi cultural heritage was passed] and from Syria since 15 March 2011.’ The resolution also reaffirmed that payment of ransom to any organization on the UN’s al-Qaeda sanctions list, regardless of who pays, would be considered a violation of international legal obligations.
Then there is the politically embarrassing (for the US, at least) source of some of the most crucial funding for ISIS – important because it provides political and military as well as direct financial support. That source is the US-backed, US-armed petro-monarchies of the Arab Gulf: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and beyond.
Writing in CounterPunch in February 2015, Patrick Cockburn reported that ISIS
is still receiving significant financial support from Arab sympathizers outside Iraq and Syria, enabling it to expand its war effort, says a senior Kurdish official. The US has been trying to stop such private donors in the Gulf oil states sending to Islamic State (ISIS) funds that help pay the salaries of fighters who may number well over 100,000. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President, Massoud Barzani, told The Independent on Sunday: ‘There is sympathy for Da’esh [ISIS] in many Arab countries and this has translated into money – and that is a disaster.’ … Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran member of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership who recently retired from the Iraqi parliament, said there was a misunderstanding as to why Gulf countries paid off IS. It is not only that donors are supporters of IS, but that the movement ‘gets money from the Arab countries because they are afraid of it,’ he says. ‘Gulf countries give money to Da’esh so that it promises not to carry out operations on their territory.’
Some of the most extensive reports are of direct funding of ISIS (as well as of the plethora of extreme Islamist organizations that preceded it) by Saudi Arabia,
