Islamic State relies on money transfers from sympathizers in Turkey, Iraq: Report
Almost two years since its territorial defeat, the terror group still has access to $100 million in cash reserves, according to the US government.
The Islamic State terror group was largely crushed by coordinated international effort in 2019, but its networks appear to still have access to an estimated $100 million in cash reserves stashed across the Middle East, the US Treasury Department said.
IS’ monetary reserves are at a historic low since it took over swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, having since lost all of its tax- and oil-producing territory.
But the group’s remnants in Syria continue to receive streams of cash from associates based in neighboring Turkey and from smugglers in Iraq, according to an unclassified Treasury Department memo released earlier this month.
Some of those transfers have gone via local hawalas (money services businesses) in the notorious al-Hol internment camp, which houses some 50,000 family members of IS fighters. Other cash shipments have been delivered by courier across the flat, open desert border between Iraq and Syria.
