The financial ties between the Islamic State, which controls most of Syria’s oil fields, and the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which indirectly buys much of its energy resources from ISIS, was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal Sunday profile (Google link) of the Russian-Syrian oil mogul who acts as a middleman.
George Haswani has been sanctioned by the United States and European Union for brokering shipments of oil from ISIS to the Syrian government. “We’ve declared to the world…that we’re going after him,” said Amos Hochstein, a State Department special envoy tasked with crippling ISIS’s lucrative oil business.
The deals made by Haswani and others have helped keep ISIS afloat by making oil-for-cash sales despite falling ISIS’ falling profits and attacks against its architecture. Oil sales are estimated to provide ISIS with somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion a year, a figure that includes sales to Assad.
Another example of Syria-ISIS collaboration was reported last week, when Sky News revealed documents captured from ISIS headquarters indicating that the terror group had made a deal with the Assad regime earlier this year to withdraw from Palmyra ahead of Syrian advances on the city. The documents also showed that Syria had agreed with ISIS to trade fertilizer for oil.
The sanctions on Haswani and others, as well as statements from high-level officials, demonstrate the U.S. government’s concern over the Assad-ISIS connection. “This is very complicated. But make no mistake – anybody, please – Assad has cut his own deal with [ISIS],” Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference last year. “They sell oil. He buys oil. They are symbiotic, not real enemies in this. And he has not, when he had a chance over four years, mounted his attacks against [ISIS].”
Assad’s chief sponsor, Iran, also has extensive ties with ISIS. In 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department exposed Iran’s support for al-Qaeda Iraq (AQI), which later became ISIS. The Iranian support to AQI was part of the broader alliance that it developed with al-Qaeda over a decade ago.
[Photo: Discovery Documentary HD / YouTube ]