ISIS Turns to Fish Farms, Car Dealerships For Revenue

ISIS Turns to Fish Farms, Car Dealerships For Revenue

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The U.S.-led coalition’s air strike have crippled the ISIS oil-smuggling-based economy, forcing the organization to rely on fish farming and car dealing as alternative money generating resources,  a new report has revealed.

The latest figures released by market research firm IHS show that ISIS revenue has fallen by around a third since last summer, to about $55 million a month.

In order to close a yawning gap in the organization’s once-lucrative $2.9 billion oil trading scheme, ISIS has now increasingly turned to operating network of fishing farms in hundreds of lakes north of Baghdad, generating millions of dollars a month. Another source of income is the many car dealerships and factories which once belonged to the Iraqi government, but which have been captured by ISIS.

According to Homeland Security News Wire, ISIS has also begun to impose a 10 percent tax on agricultural products or any other food stuffs that enters the territory under their control.

“Daesh [ISIS] treats its northern Baghdad province as a financial center; it is its primary source of financing in the capital in particular,” the report states.

Car dealerships and factories, abandoned for a while, have also been put back to work, according to the report: “In the recent period, Daesh has gone back to using government factories in the areas it controls – like Mosul – for financial returns,” the report said. However, oil smuggling from Syrian refineries is still ISIS primary source of financing.

All of the money generated by ISIS various money-making schemes is channeled to Mosul, where the organization’s equivalent of a finance ministry is located. The money is then distributed to its fighters and their family members.