Posted on 11/19/2015 4:50:03 AM PST by thackney
U.S. and coalition warplanes have launched a rapidly intensifying air campaign against the Islamic State's oil wells, refineries, and pump stations in recent days, mounting combat missions designed to incinerate tanker trucks and knock out the facilities that form the backbone of the group's oil-smuggling racket.
The air raids are meant to wreck the Islamic State's ability to profit off captured oil fields, but even if the strikes work, the extremists will have plenty of cash on hand. That's because the militant group's most important revenue stream comes not from crude oil but from extorting money from the millions of people who live under its brutal rule in territory seized in Iraq and Syria.
In July, Daniel Glaser, the assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the U.S. Treasury Department, said the Islamic State had a massive one-time cash infusion from the dozens of banks it seized in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014. The group's biggest ongoing source of money, however, comes from something quite different: extortion. Forcing the 8 million people under its thumb to pay extortion fees nets the Islamic State hundreds of millions of dollars a year, Glaser said, with the militants requiring payments for everything from garbage pickup to heating oil to road tolls.
Oil sales and smuggling ranked third, he said. That means the current U.S. air campaign -- dubbed Operation Tidal Wave II after a series of famed World War II bombing runs -- may be less effective than U.S. officials hope. President Barack Obama's administration had previously ruled out targeting tanker trucks or major parts of Syria's oil infrastructure because of the risk of causing civilian casualties and concerns about permanently destroying oil facilities that the country would eventually need once the war ended, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Whoops!...I forgot the “/s”.
Really? You think the same 0 administration that refused to hit oil targets for over a year is going to blockage food and other materials going into terrorist areas?
It can be done. But like the oil targets, it is not being done under the fake glaze of “humanitarianism”
It is not just the US in Syria.
Coordinated action by Russia and the NATO, the dominance of the US navy in the Mediterranean, and modern technology combined with diplomatic carrots and sticks to Syria’s neighbors would make a blockade feasible.
It will not be 100% fool proof but it would significantly degrade ISIS abilities. Combine that with provide arms and training/logistics support to all the Anti ISIS forces and wage a real bombing campaign against ISIS.
ISIS is a cancer that needs radical chemotherapy to cure, not the bandages and kisses strategy we currently are pursuing.
I think you are over optimistic given the terrain.
I see the travel by sea the least of the problems.
It may not be enough, but it’s a damned good place to start!!!
Moving large amounts of freight like food, ammo and people require roads. You could not make it air tight but you could make it economically impossible to wage war
More difficult, certainly.
Impossible, we don’t agree.
Cheers!
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