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ISIS's Revenues include Sales of Oil to the al- Assad Regime

April 2016

Authors:

Anne Speckhard

Georgetown University

Ahmet S Yayla

DeSales University

For months now disaffected Syrian, ISIS defectors we have been interviewing in our ISIS Defectors Interview Project have been telling us that one of the many reasons that they became disenchanted with ISIS was that their leaders were directly negotiating and selling oil to their enemy, Bashar al-Assad—oil that was then used in barrel bombs that rained back down on the Sunnis uprising against the Assad regime. This week the Wall Street Journal reported on some of the thousands of documents extracted in the May 2015 U.S. Special Forces raid against Abu Sayyaf, one of ISIS’s oil emirs (known by his nom de guerre) —confirming that indeed these defectors were telling the truth.

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ISIS’s Revenues

include Sales of

Oil to the al-

Assad Regime

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. & Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D.

For months now disaffected Syrian, ISIS defectors we have been interviewing in our ISIS

Defectors Interview Project have been telling us that one of the many reasons that they

became disenchanted with ISIS was that their leaders were directly negotiating and

selling oil to their enemy, Bashar al-Assad—oil that was then used in barrel bombs that

rained back down on the Sunnis uprising against the Assad regime.1 This week the Wall

Street Journal reported on some of the thousands of documents extracted in the May 2015

U.S. Special Forces raid against Abu Sayyaf, one of ISIS’s oil emirs (known by his nom

de guerre) —confirming that indeed these defectors were telling the truth.2

According to documents retrieved in the raid of Abu Sayyaf’s Deir ez-Zor hideout and

now viewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad entered

into multimillion-dollar oil deals with ISIS.3 According to Newsweek, this sale of oil to

Damascus helped the group to reach a peak of $40 million a month in oil revenue with

the Assad regime oil deals contributing to seventy-two percent of the $289.5 million the

group earned in natural-resource revenues in the six months preceding February 2015.4

Even now, some analysts estimate the Syrian regime is buying 20,000 barrels of oil per

day from ISIS. Likewise, the Assad regime has kept the electricity on for the so-called

ISIS “Caliphate”, supplying them with electricity throughout their time in power—an

eerie thought when one considers the possibility of ISIS with the lights off and an

inability to access the Internet.5

A document identified as Memo No. 156, dated February 11, 2015 shows Abu Sayyaf,

who headed the Islamic State’s Diwan of Natural Resources (the terrorist group’s oil

ministry), requesting an unknown party to build investment links with businessmen allied

to the Assad regime for the sale of oil to the regime. The document also reveals that ISIS

already had agreements with Damascus to permit oil trucks!and pipeline transit from

regime-controlled fields through ISIS-controlled territory, something our defectors also

told us.6

Indeed, our ISIS defectors have repeatedly told us that ISIS emirs made agreements with

the Assad regime for the sale of oil and some of the defectors recalled being called to act

as guards for and personally witnessing regime engineers and oil specialists arriving from

Damascus to the Deir ez-Zor oil fields, having come to repair the pipelines and pumping

devices so that oil could be delivered and sold to the regime. When our defectors

complained to and questioned their emirs about these sales they were rudely rebuffed by

their leaders and told that ISIS is a “state” and able to negotiate any deal it wishes with

other states, and reminded that they should not question the wisdom of their leaders. This

despite that oil sold to the regime returned to haunt them, as al-Assad’s barrel bombs

filled with oil—likely sold to them from ISIS—rained back down upon their heads and

killed their cadres and family members.

According to The Wall Street Journal, two former oil emirs also confided to WSJ

reporters that ISIS had made deals with businessman connected to the Syrian regime. The

documents confirming these reports were captured when U.S. Special Forces entered

Eastern Syria via Iraq, killing ISIS cadres guarding Abu Sayyaf’s compound before they

also assassinated him.7 Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm Sayyaf who is suspected along with her

husband of having organized the sex slave trade in ISIS was also captured in the raid and

later transferred to the Kurds.8

Now however, Turkey has attempted to crack down on illicit trade and ISIS has also lost

control of a lot of its Syrian border with Turkey to the Kurds. The funds from oil sales

enable them to pay their cadres regular monthly salaries and obtain weapons—some that

arrive new in boxes—according to our ISIS defectors interviews.

As ISIS swept across eastern Syria in late 2013, and early 2014, the militants seized

many of Syria’s key oil fields in the Deir ez-Zor province, such as al-Tanak and al-Omar.

In January 2016, Syrian Kurds recaptured al-Jasbah oil field, an area that was producing

three thousand barrels of oil a day. The U.S.-led coalition, as well as Russian, air strikes

have targeted oil fields held by ISIS significantly reducing its ability to refine oil and sell

it to illicit buyers.9 Thus, despite a brisk trade with the al-Assad regime up to thirty

percent of the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure has been destroyed, according to a U.S.

government sources by coalition airstrikes, and oil revenues are no longer the terrorist

group’s primary source of income. Still, oil revenues, down from five hundred million

per year in 2014, are currently making ISIS approximately three hundred sixty-five

million U.S. dollars per year, or one million U.S. dollars per day, on its oil sales,

including sales to businessmen linked to the Assad regime.10

ISIS’s primary source of revenue now comes from taxing those under its control (making

forty-eight million U.S. dollars per year). 11 ISIS charges all of its “citizens” ten percent

tax on income and the same percent on all cash withdrawals and an additional twenty

percent tax on all services.12 However those revenues are also threatened with ISIS

controlled territory shrinking. Up to now, ISIS also made about one billion from the

seizure of bank vaults, twenty million in ransoms from hostage-taking, one hundred

million from the sale of antiquities and an unknown amount from its trade in slaves and

control of phosphates and cement.13 Our defectors also told us that ISIS sells grain stores

to the Assad regime, and that they worry that without seeds and support for planting, the

people currently living under ISIS may starve in upcoming seasons.

Current and Past Sources of ISIS’s Revenue

• Taxes – $576 million per year (shrinking as the group’s territory is degraded)14

• Oil Revenues - $365 million per year (down from $500 million per year)15

• Sale of Antiquities - $100 million estimated thus far16

• Seizure of Bank Vaults – $500 million to 1 billion (one time grab)17

• Ransoms from Hostage Takings - $20 million thus far

• Trade in Phosphates and Cement – Unknown

• Trade in Slaves - Unknown

That ISIS made illicit deals with the Assad regime was a major source of frustration to

many of the ISIS cadres who spoke with us, and a significant reason for defecting. While

conspiracy theories abound in the Middle East, and the recent conflicts have made for the

strangest of alliances, some of our ISIS defectors seriously wondered if ISIS was actually

a direct product of the al-Assad regime. They pointed to the fact that the regime’s

military often surrendered huge stores of weapons to the militant group when retreating

rather than destroy them essentially supplying ISIS with weapons, and why ISIS cadres

fought more with the Free Syrian Army, killing Sunnis, than with the regime.

More details on these topics are included in our forthcoming book ISIS Defectors: Inside

Stories of Confronting the Caliphate, Advances Press 2016.

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown

University in the School of Medicine and is Director of the International Center for the

Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and is a nonresident Fellow of Trends. She is also

the author of Talking to Terrorists and coauthor of Undercover Jihadi. Her newly released

book, inspired by the true story of an American girl seduced over the Internet into ISIS,

is Bride of ISIS. Dr. Speckhard has interviewed nearly five hundred terrorists, their

family members and supporters in various parts of the world including Gaza, the West

Bank, Chechnya, Iraq, Jordan and many countries in Europe. She was responsible for

designing the psychological and Islamic challenge aspects of the Detainee Rehabilitation

Program in Iraq to be applied to twenty thousand detainees and eight hundred juveniles.

She is currently running the ISIS Defectors Interview Project with Dr. Ahmet Yayla at

ICSVE. Personal website: www.AnneSpeckhard.com

Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D. is Professor and the Chair of Sociology Department at Harran

University in south of Turkey by the Syrian border and the Deputy Director of the

International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). Dr. Yayla served as

Chief of Counter-terrorism and Operations Division in the Turkish National Police. He

has earned his masters and Ph.D. degrees on the subject of terrorism and radicalization at

the University of North Texas. Dr. Yayla’s research mainly focuses on terrorism,

sociology, dealing with terrorism without use of force, terrorist recruitment and

propaganda, radicalization (including ISIS and al Qaeda) and violence. He has authored

many works on the subject of terrorism. He has also been advisor to the United States

Department of Homeland Security (November 2005 to April 2006) on issues of terrorism

and interacting with Muslim Communities in the United States. Dr. Yayla witnessed

(October 21st, 2006) to the United States Congress and Senate, Homeland Security

Committee and Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks on the

subject of “Local Law Enforcement Preparedness for countering the threats of terrorism.”

Reference for this article is: Speckhard, Anne & Yayla, Ahmet S. (April 27, 2016) ISIS’s

Revenues Include Sales of Oil to the al-Assad Regime, ICSVE Brief Report

http://www.icsve.com

References:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1!Speckhard, A., & Yayla, A. S. (December 2015). Eyewitness accounts from recent

defectors from Islamic State: Why they joined, what they saw, why they quit.

Perspectives on Terrorism, 9(6), 95-118. Retrieved from

2 Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of-

islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

3 Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of-

islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

4 Moore, J. (April 26, 2016). ISIS's multimillion-dollar oil deals with Assad regime

uncovered in U.S. Special Forces raid. Newsweek. Retrieved from

http://europe.newsweek.com/isis-multi-million-oil-deals-assad-regime-revealed-

us-special-forces-raid-452426

5 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

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6 Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of-

islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

7 Loveluck, L., & Blair, D. (May 16. 2015). US special forces kill 'senior Isil leader'

Abu Sayyaf in rare Syria raid. The Telegraph. Retrieved from

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11610217/US-special-

forces-kill-Isil-leader-in-rare-raid-inside-Syria.html

8 Mortimer, C. (February 8, 2016). Kayla Mueller: Wife of senior Isis leader, Umm

Sayyaf, charged in connection with US aid worker's death. Independent.

Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kayla-

mueller-wife-of-senior-isis-leader-umm-sayyaf-charged-in-connection-with-us-

aid-workers-death-a6862021.html

9 Wintour, P. (March 8, 2016). Oil revenue collapse means Isis reliant on Gulf funds,

inquiry hears. The Guardian. Retrieved from

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/oil-revenue-collapse-isis-reliant-

gulf-funds-inquiry-hears

10 Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of-

islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

11 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

12 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

13 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

14!Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/!

15 Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of-

islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

16 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

17 Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/!

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Eyewitness Accounts from Recent Defectors from Islamic State: Why They Joined, What They Saw, Why They Quit Anne Speckhard, Ahmet S. Yayla Abstract This research note reports on preliminary results of the Islamic State Interviews Project, based here on a sample of thirteen Syrian IS defectors who spoke on life inside the “Islamic State”(IS). . A fuller and more systematic account will be published in early 2016 in book form. According to what we learned, all IS cadres undergo Shariah training in which they are imbued with a Takfiri ideology that allows them to deem all others, including Muslims, who disagree with IS’ extreme ideology, as apostates who should be killed. Despite this indoctrination, all of our informants (all are Syrians) experienced their Shariah trainers as a positive influence since they allowed them to deepen their own religious understanding. In this sense, these disengaged defectors remained radicalized “true believers”. They also had been given military training–learning to handle weapons, explosives, and undergoing exercise. Following these compulsory courses, they were sent to the front. Syrians who join IS are rewarded with salaried jobs which for young men translates into the ability to marry and for young women the money allows them to save their families from literal starvation. Foreign fighters are receiving additional rewards: wives, sexual slaves, and sometimes homes and cars. Daily life was punctuated by brutal practices – including floggings, torture and beheadings. Defections were the result of exposure to extreme brutality, disgust over the slave trade, observations of deep hypocrisy–a total mismatch between the words and deeds of IS. Charges of corruption and complaints about battlefield decisions that produced unnecessary deaths in their own ranks were also causes of disillusionment . Our informants all had come to hate IS and warn others not to join what they gradually came to see as a totally disappointing, ruthless and un-Islamic organization.

The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of- islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

May 2016

B Faucon
M Coker

Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-of- islamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

ISIS's multimillion-dollar oil deals with Assad regime uncovered in U.S. Special Forces raid. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://europe.newsweek.com/isis-multi-million-oil-deals-assad-regime-revealed- us-special-forces-raid-452426

May 2016

J Moore

Moore, J. (April 26, 2016). ISIS's multimillion-dollar oil deals with Assad regime uncovered in U.S. Special Forces raid. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://europe.newsweek.com/isis-multi-million-oil-deals-assad-regime-revealed- us-special-forces-raid-452426

Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from http

Apr 2016

T Lister

Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

US special forces kill 'senior Isil leader' Abu Sayyaf in rare Syria raid. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11610217/US-special- forces-kill-Isil-leader-in-rare-raid-inside-Syria

Apr 2015

L Loveluck
D Blair

Loveluck, L., & Blair, D. (May 16. 2015). US special forces kill 'senior Isil leader' Abu Sayyaf in rare Syria raid. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11610217/US-special- forces-kill-Isil-leader-in-rare-raid-inside-Syria.html 8

Kayla Mueller: Wife of senior Isis leader, Umm Sayyaf, charged in connection with US aid worker's death. Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kayla- mueller-wife-of-senior-isis-leader-umm-sayyaf-charged-in-connection-with-us- aid-workers-death-a6862021

Mar 2016

C Mortimer

Mortimer, C. (February 8, 2016). Kayla Mueller: Wife of senior Isis leader, Umm Sayyaf, charged in connection with US aid worker's death. Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kayla- mueller-wife-of-senior-isis-leader-umm-sayyaf-charged-in-connection-with-us- aid-workers-death-a6862021.html 9

Oil revenue collapse means Isis reliant on Gulf funds, inquiry hears. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/oil-revenue-collapse-isis-reliant- gulf-funds-inquiry-hears 10

Apr 2016

P Wintour

Wintour, P. (March 8, 2016). Oil revenue collapse means Isis reliant on Gulf funds, inquiry hears. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/oil-revenue-collapse-isis-reliant- gulf-funds-inquiry-hears 10

Apr 2016

B Faucon
M Coker

Faucon, B., & Coker, M. (April 24, 2016). The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-deadly-fall-ofislamic-states-oil-tycoon-1461522313

ISIS's multimillion-dollar oil deals with Assad regime uncovered in U.S. Special Forces raid

Apr 2016

J Moore

Is ISIS going broke? CNN

Mar 2016

T Lister

Lister, T. (March 9, 2016). Is ISIS going broke? CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/04/middleeast/isis-finance-broke-lister/

ISIS's Revenues include Sales of Oil to the al- Assad Regime

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