http://time.com/3857121/isis-smuggling/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Fworld+%28TIME%3A+Top+World+Stories%29
ISIS Makes a Fortune From Smuggling Migrants Says Report
Vivienne Walt _at_vivwalt
May 13, 2015
Migrants pay thousands of dollars to armed groups in Africa and the
Middle East on their journey to Europe
The movement of migrants across the Middle East and Africa towards
Europe has generated up to $323 million for the Islamic State in Iraq
and Greater Syria (ISIS) and other jihadist groups, a new report has
revealed.
Many of the migrants embark from Libya on unseaworthy boats which have
foundered with thousands drowning and thousands being rescued by
European navies. At least 170,000 refugees made the sea journey last
year, and that number looks likely to increase this year, according to
the European Union’s border-surveillance organization Frontex.
European Union and African officials are scrambling to find ways to
stop the migration. On Wednesday the Guardian revealed a 19-page E.U.
strategy report to crack down on the smugglers, which included air
strikes on boats and possibly the use of troops in Libya.
But while E.U. officials anguish over the plight of people crossing
the Mediterranean to get to Europe, the migration has proved an
invaluable business opportunity for groups like ISIS. So valuable that
international crime experts believe ISIS might have launched some
attacks specifically in order to drive people to flee, and then profit
from their flight. “They [ISIS] were looking desperately for new
funds,” says Christian Nelleman, director of the Norwegian Center for
Global Analysis, or RHIPTO, who co-authored this week’s report with
the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized
Crime, a consortium of organized-crime experts. “Unlike al-Qaeda, ISIS
needs a totally different scale of funds because they run an army and
provide social services,” he says.
ISIS’s sources of funding appear to have changed markedly since 2014.
For much of last year, ISIS brought in funds from oil smuggling — a
key reason why its fighters seized oil facilities in Syria and Iraq
—with oil trading earning up to $3 million a day, according to U.N.
estimates. But those earnings have crashed, perhaps by half, since
last August, when the U.S. and its allies began bombing ISIS oil
facilities, according to a Western intelligence report from last
January, which was shared with TIME this week. The report estimates
that ISIS needs between $523.5 million and $815.3 million a year to
run its operations, including to pay its fighters, run social
services, and buy weapons and ammunition.
Aside from oil, ISIS has recently earned between $22 million and $55
million a year taxing antiquities smugglers, who traffic looted
objects out of Syria and Iraq, and between $168 million and $228
million a month taxing small businesses and residents in
ISIS-controlled areas, according to the January intelligence report,
which said ISIS has “a robust budget for a group numbering in the 30
to 40,000 range.”
In fact, the most robust new business is migrant smuggling, with funds
going not only to ISIS but also al-Qaeda-linked groups around the
Sahara and militias in Libya, which seized the capital Tripoli last
August. Smugglers typically charge each migrant between $800 and
$1,000 to reach Libya, either from across the Sahara or from the
Middle East, and then between $1,500 and $1,900 to cross the
Mediterranean to Europe, according to this week’s report.
In an interview with TIME last month, one migrant described being
forced to pay different armed groups along each step of his four-month
journey, from his home in Senegal until he squeezed aboard a migrant
boat off Libya’s coast in mid-April, bringing the total cost of his
journey to about $2,150. That is typical of the smugglers’ operation
across the Middle East and Africa, according to this week’s report.
“The value of this trade dwarfs any existing trafficking and smuggling
businesses in the region, and has particularly strengthened groups
with a terrorist agenda, including the Islamic State (ISIS),” the
report says. “This growing business now provides what is possibly now
the largest and most easily accessible threat finance opportunity for
both organized crime networks and armed groups to purchase arms,
establish larger and more regular armies, and demand taxation.”
The report suggests ISIS has recently driven Syrians and Iraqis from
their homes in a deliberate attempt to increase their control over
smuggling routes, and to drive up the numbers of those trying to cross
the Mediterranean. Syrians now comprise the largest number of migrants
crossing the Mediterranean, followed by refugees from the East African
nation of Eritrea. The surge in Syrian refugees crossing the
Mediterranean since last year appeared to follow ISIS attacks on
refugee camps. “Why would they want to attack refugee camps near the
Syria-Jordan border?” Nelleman says. “The purpose was to drive
refugees out.” Many of those refugees made their way to Libya to take
dangerous boats to Europe.
Received on Thu May 14 2015 - 21:18:33 EDT