September 25, 2015 | Quote

ISIS Has a Cash-Flow Problem

The ISIS economy is struggling.

A little more than a year after declaring an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the extremist group is having a hard time keeping the promises it made to those living in its territory, Newsweek reports.

Experts and caliphate residents told Newsweek there was a widening income gap between ISIS fighters and average civilians, which is breeding more resentment among those under ISIS control.

Some of the cash crunch comes from falling oil prices and airstrikes targeting oil facilities, and sources contend that ISIS spends more on weapons than on fulfilling the needs of the people living under its control.

To make up for its reported drop in revenue, ISIS is said to rely more on taxation, the group's main source of income.

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Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, confirmed this to Business Insider last week.

“The people who have highly desirable skill sets like doctors are fleeing,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “The oil industry … is another area where they haven't preserved the level of talent that they need.”

The brain drain also hurts ISIS' claims that it provides all the services of a self-sustaining government.

“If people are leaving because of ISIS' inability to provide basic governance, that calls their legitimacy into question,” Gartenstein-Ross said.

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Read the full article here

Issues:

Syria