NBC News, Reuters and other media outlets have reported that Iraqi officials say the ISIS militant group has been selling captured crude oil and gasoline that it seized when the terrorist group took over portions of northern Iraq a month ago. The illegal sales are generating what Iraqi officials called multi-million dollar profit. News outlets in the Middle East have reported ISIS to be generating as much as $1 million per day from illegal sale of oil. “The small oil fields were seized during ISIS’ two-day sweep through northern Iraq in mid-June and are in two locations: two near the northern city of Mosul and two further south near Tikrit,” NBC reported. “Unlike larger Iraqi oil fields which remain under Kurdish and central government control, the estimated 80 wells held by ISIS are sealed and not pumping.”
Iraq Oil Report is reporting today that “insurgents seemingly affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) temporarily took control of at least two wells of the Mansuriya gas field on Thursday before being pushed back by Iraqi security forces. The attack highlighted the militants’ continuing determination to capture valuable energy infrastructure throughout northern Iraq.”
Source: Financial Times
ISIS: ‘Highly Organized Administrators’ or Thugs?
Lebanon’s Daily Star said last week that the ISIS extremists “…have proven to be highly organized administrators. Flush with cash, they fix roads, police traffic, administer courts, and have even set up an export system of smuggled crude from oil fields they control.”
Last week NBC published a story entitled “What Life is Like in the Iraqi City of Mosul Under ISIS Rule,” that described conditions as follows: “When Sunni extremists seized control of Iraq’s second-largest city, many feared the militants would brutally brandish their new-found power and exert a reign of horror on the residents of Mosul. One month later, it appears that most in the city are far from terrified, their biggest complaint a lack of electricity rather than explosive violence. “We all thought ISIS fighters will hurt people, but they did not do so,” said shop owner Fahad, referring to militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). “It is 100 percent safe here. The only thing we suffer from is the lack of public services.”
However reports coming out of Iraq the past few days paint an ugly picture of the group. NBC reported that ISIS leaders have called for the mutilation of up to 4 million women and girls in its captured areas of Iraq. The Guardian reported that Iraqi Christians were forced to flee the northern city of Mosul under threat of forced conversion or execution by jihadists and spoke of their terror as churches were turned into mosques and their homes and property confiscated.
“The Arabic letter “N” for Nasrani (Christians) was daubed on the doors of houses – to show that they had been seized as the property of the Islamic state declared by Isis,” the Guardian said.
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