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“Light” in your dark movements Islamic State try to give a study published in the UK. Analyzing the resources of the jihadists, he tries to answer a question that worries many “where did the Islamic State find the money?”.
A mobile phone shop that buys six tons of aluminum paste. A fertilizer merchant who has ordered … 78 tons of goods. A UK-based company that controls tracking information in the US, while Turkey makes payment for these services. With these and other related activities, the jihadists of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” managed to seize their arsenal. For many years they went unnoticed, as few could imagine how dangerous their action would be and how persistent their effort would be.
Over time, the “Islamic State”, Deutsche Welle reports, organized a network of vendors and artisans, providing it with an arsenal. This is according to a study recently published by the London-based Conflict Armament Research Institute. With this arsenal, starting in 2014, the jihadists expanded and consolidated their presence in Iraq and Syria, until the international community managed to organize a military force and repel their threat.
Dark transactions on the Turkish-Syrian border
According to the study, the area on the Islamic State border played a key role in equipping the Islamic State. Turkey with Syria. ISIS members, hiding their true identities, turned to local companies to request the necessary ingredients for the manufacture of weapons and explosives.
“They deliberately chose jihadists this area, because they knew it was suitable for supply and for these transactions, “said Peter Naumann, a professor at King’s College London. A similar tactic, he notes, was applied by other” revolutionaries “who acted clandestinely, such as Mao Zedong or the Che Guevara.
The fact that ISIS has gone unnoticed for so many years is mainly due to the cunning of the “middlemen”, who concealed their identities. Orders were placed only through fake email accounts, third party websites, or audio software. Payment was made in cash through international chains that provide this service, while many times the money was withdrawn in a country other than the one where the order was registered. Researchers at Conflict Armament Research are investigating the remittance flows reaching Asia. Ultimately, the research shows that much of the arsenal has a completely different origin than the experts initially assumed.
“At first we thought that the jihadists had acquired weapons from the Persian Gulf countries, but in the end it seems that many of the arms they have made them themselves, ”Peter Neumann tells Deutsche Welle. “In addition, they managed to seize weapons that had been abandoned by the regular Iraqi or Syrian army,” he explains.
The “red flags”
Investigators believe that the ISIS network has been dismantled, but the jihadists are doing their best to acquire weapons. Yassim Mohammad, a terrorism expert and administrator of the euroarabtc.com website, citing information from the Iraqi government, believes that jihadists now only have light weapons. “The prevailing view is that ISIS has lost its position around the world,” Mohammad said.
He said that the International Coalition to Fight ISIS now controls the network’s potential sources of funding, as well as the movements of suspected jihadists, all of which had the effect of “reducing ISIS operations around the world.” What is particularly encouraging, says Yassim Mohammad, is that “the jihadists no longer appear to have advanced technology, such as chemical or biological weapons.”
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