The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (27 page)

Upon what, then, was the Islamic State relying as its primary source of income?

Said Kirby: “A lot of donations.”
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Well-Heeled Donors

A
lot
of donations. The Islamic State received $40 million in donations in 2013 and 2014—not only from rich individual donors, but even from government sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Qatar and Kuwait, according to Lori Plotkin Boghardt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “continue to stick out as two trouble spots when it comes to counterterrorist financing enforcement.” Boghardt noted that “the U.S. government continues to be concerned about spotty, to say the least, Kuwaiti and Qatari enforcement of their counterterrorist financing laws,” and attributed this spotty enforcement to the fact that “cracking down on some ISIS financiers is politically complicated for these countries’ leaderships”—because the financiers are men of power and political influence there.
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What motivates these shadowy donors? There can be only one answer: Islam. The oil-rich Middle East is full of fantastically wealthy men who read the same Qur’an that is read in the Islamic State, and they are ready
to use their wealth to aid the jihad for the sake of Allah worldwide. They don’t see the Islamic State as a twisting and hijacking of the peaceful tenets of their religion—that kind of talk is for Western consumption. Quietly, and with the full force of their pocketbooks, they demonstrate that—on the contrary—they see ISIS as a true and faithful embodiment of Islamic teaching.

These donors get money into the Islamic State by means of old smugglers’ routes that have been used for generations, and which are supported by well-established systems ensuring kickbacks to government and law enforcement officials who obligingly turn a blind eye.
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They also, in line with the Islamic State’s technical savvy, make skillful use of modern means to launder money.
Newsweek
reported in November 2014 that donations are often “laundered through unregistered charities in the form of ‘humanitarian aid,’ with terrorists coordinating geographical drop-off points for payments using cellphone applications such as WhatsApp and Kik. Not only can WhatsApp be used around the world but, crucially, it incorporates a GPS mapping tool that makes it easier for terrorists to communicate their exact locations to each other. Kik offers the added benefit of allowing terrorists to register a username without providing a phone number that could identify them. Affiliated ISIS Twitter accounts openly publish their Kik usernames.”
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Kidnapping and Ransoming Infidels

The Islamic State demanded $100,000,000 for the release of journalist James Foley.
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When payment was not forthcoming, Foley was beheaded. Later, the Islamic State demanded $200,000,000 from the Japanese government for the life of hostage Haruna Yukawa. When the deadline passed with no response from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Islamic State beheaded Yukawa and released an audiotape purporting to feature their surviving Japanese hostage, Kenji Goto. The speaker said, “They no
longer want money. You bring them their sister from the Jordanian regime, and I will be released immediately. Me for her. Don’t let these be my last words you ever hear. Don’t let Abe also kill me.”
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“Their sister from the Jordanian regime” was Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, a Muslim woman who was at that time imprisoned in Jordan after a failed jihad suicide bombing attempt in 2005. When the Jordanian government failed to release her, the Islamic State beheaded Goto.

In both cases, the Islamic State did not get the ransom money it demanded; however, on other occasions—which have received little to no publicity because of the embarrassment of those paying the ransoms—its ransom demands have been more successful. The Treasury Department estimates that in 2014 alone the Islamic State took in $20 million in ransom payments.
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These payments were for hostages who never received the media attention accorded to Foley, the Japanese hostages, and the other high-profile prisoners of the Islamic State. One Syrian Christian whom the Islamic State held captive for five months recounted that throughout his captivity he was kept chained to a wall blindfolded and was frequently beaten and infrequently fed. There were, he said, around one hundred captives of the Islamic State in the place where he was being kept; most were Christian. ISIS jihadis once told one of them, “We know everything about you. We know where your family lives, what their names are.” Another was forced to call his family during a torture session so that his screams would frighten them into paying the ransom. The jihadis told another, whose family was slow in paying, “We will make you call your family and tell them it’s their fault you are going to die.”

Among those guarding him, the Syrian Christian recalled, were Muslims from France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Britain, and Saudi Arabia. Eventually his family paid $80,000 to the Islamic State, and he was released.
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Ransoms make up as much as 20 percent of the Islamic State’s revenue.

All in all, the Islamic State is estimated to take in around $6 million a day.
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How the U.S. Paved the Way

In March 2015, Barack Obama offered a succinct explanation for how the Islamic State came to be: it was George W. Bush’s fault. “ISIL,” said Obama, “is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq, which grew out of our invasion, which is an example of unintended consequences, which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”
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Obama was derided for playing politics yet again in an area where partisanship should have had no place, and for blaming his predecessor for the umpteenth time. Yet in this particular instance, Obama was actually partially right—though only in a way that showed up his own failures and mistakes all the more vividly.

George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 with the confident hope that once Saddam Hussein was toppled the Iraqi people would welcome the Americans as liberators and establish a Western, secular republic that would become a beacon of freedom and the vanguard of the new Middle East.

Saddam Hussein was duly toppled, but the Americans were not universally welcomed as liberators. Soon American troops were being called “occupiers.” The new Iraqi constitution that was eventually adopted was an American production—but it enshrined Islamic law as the highest law of the land instead of instituting truly republican principles and guaranteeing people equality of rights before the law, freedom of speech, and other essential elements of a genuine functioning republic. Sharia is a political as well as a religious system, and it is authoritarian, not allowing for equality of rights for women or non-Muslims, or for the freedom of speech that any genuinely free society must have.

The elections that were eventually held were less exercises in Jeffersonian principles than in tribalism, with Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds voting strictly along tribal and sectarian lines. Shi’ites constitute 60 to 70 percent of Iraq’s population, and so the Shi’ites won the elections. Sunnis, who had ruled Iraq for decades under Saddam Hussein, felt angry and disenfranchised when a Shi’ite regime was established in Baghdad. And soon Sunni jihadist groups began to capitalize upon that anger and gain recruits from among the large body of young Sunnis in Iraq who hated the United States and the Baghdad government—and were ready to wage jihad against both.

That much can indeed be laid at the feet of George W. Bush. He and his advisers misjudged the nature of Islam and of Islamic law: their constitution for Iraq, with its adherence to Sharia, directly contradicted their desire to establish Iraq as a Western-style republic. They were wrong to assume that the lure of democracy would be stronger than the pull of government
constituted according to Islamic law. Ultimately, in encouraging Sharia rule in Iraq, Bush encouraged the forces that led to the rise of the Islamic State.

However, in criticizing Bush for his Iraq policies, Obama was also incriminating himself. We have seen how, in his speech at Fort Bragg on December 14, 2011, Obama called his withdrawal of American troops from Iraq a “moment of success” and added: “Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”
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None of this was true. Iraq was neither sovereign, nor stable, nor self-reliant, and Obama gave ISIS a golden opportunity by withdrawing American troops before any of those things actually was true. Obama created a vacuum, and the Islamic State filled it.

Destroying Civilization

Once in power, the Islamic State set about “purifying” the land.