Andrew McKillop
21st Century Wire
The most interesting intersection ever – where the War on Terror meets Climate Change…
The hype surrounding ISIS/ISIL is being ramped-up in North America and Europe, with the chief driver of the fear being an alleged series of beheadings that no one can rightly verify as real. Real or fake, the beheading videos were used as a powerful public relations springboard to market ‘fresh airstrikes’ in Iraq and Syria to emotionally vulnerable western audiences.
There’s also intense media speculation about the amount of black market oil money ISIS terror gangs are making in Syria and Iraq, and huge hype around ‘Coalition efforts to cut off the terror dollars’. It’s a mess, but we’ll give you some key answers here.
As this year’s UNGA 2014 gets underway, the French leader is really stretching it in an attempt to bring the world together in group fear moment…
The Killing of Herve Gourdel
At the UN General Assembly, 24 September, French president Francois Hollande (photo, left) condemned the killing in Algeria of a French hostage, Herve Gourdel, by terrorists claiming they are now part of the Islamic State and have abandoned al Qaeda. Their message to France by Internet was titled a ‘Message in Blood for the French Government’. All very dramatic, and very well-timed.
French journalists and terror experts suggested that a ransom demand of several million euros had been rejected at the “highest levels of the state”, by Francois Hollande.
No doubt there is a story behind this story. The fact that France suddenly announced it took part in a spectacular raid against ISIS targets only hours after the alleged Herve Gourdel killing should be viewed as suspect by anyone following the uncanny timelines in this ISIS crisis.
ISIS are ‘climate refugees’
The Climate Widget is a powerful political device, and when in the hands of politicians (with the TV cameras rolling), it can be used to link just about any crisis to climate change or global warming.
At the UN in New York, Hollande insistently claimed, even passionately claimed that global warming has driven millions of persons from their previously stable lives, making them more receptive to Islamic, or Crony Islamic terrorism. Hollande traced a direct link between global warming (now called “climate change”) and terrorism. Amazing.
He then asked his listeners at the UN to make the December 2015 Paris Climate Summit a major success with binding resolutions to limit the human emission of greenhouse gases. A climate summit in Paris? One thing is certain, there will be lots of cocktails receptions and overall, it will be a glorious talking shop, but don’t expect anything useful to actually come out of that meeting.
CLIMATE CRIMINEL! Hollande arrives in NYC for UN Climate Summit via private Boeing, picked up in king-sized SUV.
Close advisers and collaborators of Hollande’s PS government in France, interviewed throughout the day of 24 September on State-owned media such as France-Inter radio, and government-friendly media such as BFM TV and i-Tele TV, claimed that ‘the Islamic State benefits from climate refugees’ and from large amount of revenues from selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil. One estimate given by a French expert on global terrorism was that at its peak of power before 2005, al Qaeda had a “war chest” of 200 – 500 million US dollars, but the Islamic State, today, already has $2 to $3 billion in its own treasure chest. It can now buy more mercenary fighters.
This “surprise” is much less surprising than the fantastic claim, by Hollande at the UN, that “climate refugees” are swelling the ranks of terrorist movements, not only in the Middle East but also in Africa.
The revenues of the Islamic State are no surprise at all. Spy satellite surveillance of the Syria-Iraq-Turkey border region is supposedly unable to see ISIS oil tanker truck convoys shipping stolen oil from Syria into Turkey on a round-the-clock basis for at least the past three months, sold at prices as low as $33 – $40 a barrel. This oil and the road tanker trucks is supposedly “invisible” !
Genel Energy which is run by BP’s ex-chief Tony Hayward, with Nathaniel Rothschild and Turkish directors very close to the seat of power in Ankara can easily explain the business model, because it is exactly the same as Genel Energy operates in Kurdistan. The only significant difference is that most reports on this operation suggest the Kurds are paid about $50 per barrel for their oil, shipped in road tanker truck convoys into Turkey, round the clock, but ISIS is paid less.
Nice Business
Buy oil at less than a half of the world price, and then sell it at the world price! Financing terror.
With the killing of another white hostage, we are now interested in how the Islamic State makes money and stolen oil is the two-word answer. This however is only the “first cut analysis”. Reports out of Syria strongly suggest that the Islamic State, intermediaries including Kurds and Christians, and the state of Bashar al Assad operate an “arms length business” based on oil but extending to other domains.
Damascus still obtains oil, from Syria’s eastern oil-rich regions controlled by ISIS, and may also be engaged in oil-swap operations where Damascus imports Kurdish oil from Turkey, always by road tankers, in exchange for Syrian oil exported by marine tanker ships into the Mediterranean. This implies that Syrian-origin oil, controlled by ISIS, is firstly moved east, into northern Iraq, and then shipped with Kurd oil to Turkey, followed by the return of this oil, to Syria.
ISIS ALL-STARS: Members of ISIS Athletic Club with new shoes, on their way to a pick-up basketball game in Mosul.
The theoretically very surprising lack of public-domain spy satellite images of eastern Syria, northern Iraq and Turkey’s border regions would notably enable analysts to estimate the extent and degree of damage to Syria’s oil pipelines in eastern and northern Syria. This could be estimated on the basis of first estimating daily road tanker truck movements, against the likely total production of Syrian oil, Syrian domestic oil consumption, and the probable daily oil revenues of the Islamic State from oil. The oil has to move, whether by pipeline or road.
In the case of how much oil is ISIS selling, the implied daily total oil sales by ISIS would be about 50, 000 barrels. Because only pre-war data is available on Syrian oil production (for example from US EIA) it is necessary to surmise what is happening. It may for example be possible that ISIS controls more than the double of 50 000 barrels-per-day in theoretical production capacity, and possibly more than that but does not have the transport capacity, either by road or pipeline, to export it.
The role of Nato-member Turkey is basic to both the Kurdish oil and ISIS oil operations, but with little surprise official Turkish information on the subject of either, is almost non-existent! Surely, the Turks have nothing to hide. Hmmm…
The now highly active military conflict between Kurdish Peshmergas and ISIS can also be called a fight for oil power, due to ISIS wanting to move further east and south in Iraq, while Kurdistan is seeking to move the other way – also including Syria’s oil producing eastern regions. In all three cases of the Damascus government, Baghdad government, and the Turkish government’s relations with the Kurds, these are “strained or difficult”. For Damascus and Baghdad, relations with ISIS are of outright war for national territory and oil production capacities.
The strong probability that Damascus is buying oil from ISIS, directly or otherwise, may seem surprising but other trades, notably oil-for-food and inevitably… weapons-for-oil-and-food will also be in play.
The role of intermediaries is critical, with already large and certainly growing potentials for further trade-based, rather than war-based relations. These intermediaries almost certainly already include international oil and other companies – like GENEL.
Back to the UN
Francois Hollande, as chief of French armed forces, can obtain aerial surveillance and satellite data on at least the road tanker truck movements probably, or certainly, controlled by ISIS. There is no mystery!
This would enable the interdiction of these truck movements and a massive fall in daily revenues of ISIS. Until the latest atrocity killing of a white hostage in Algeria, however, media coverage of “Where does ISIS get its money?” has been almost zero.
Hollande prefers to tell the world that “climate refugees” are swelling the ranks of ISIS and other terrorist organizations and networks, but serious action to cut their funding and financing would obviously include or start with the “illicit oil trade” of eastern Syria, northern Iraq and Kurdistan, and Turkey.
Hollande’s elite belief or fantasy that “climate refugee” numbers are already massive and are constantly growing, and that cutting tailpipe emissions from SUV’s, power plant emissions, and developing solar power and bicycle lanes (and over-priced rent-a-bikes) in urban areas can “mitigate the problem” is not so much laughable but bizarre.
Yes, yes. Destroy that ISIS oil trade.
And by the way, the Americans are telling us now to get used to these airstrikes because this operation “will last years”.
Do you get it yet?
READ MORE INSIDE ISIS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ISIS Files
