Staying power

In recent weeks there have been gains against ISIS. On Dec. 28 Iraqi forces retook Ramadi, a city of 400,000 in Iraq occupied for seven months. In January Kurdish forces in Syria wrested from ISIS Tel Abyad, a border town once dominated by Armenian Christians.

In the wake of ISIS retreat is wreckage. Few civilians remain in Ramadi, and there’s little to go back to. Bridges: blown. Electricity and running water: cut. Neighborhoods: so gashed by trenches and tunnels, so booby-trapped and bombed they are unrecognizable. “Homes?” an Iraqi commander replied when a New York Times reporter asked how residents would return to their homes. “There are no homes.”

The wreckage is human, too. Tel Abyad Christian resident Sarkis Kirbukiyle stayed under ISIS occupation (he paid $566 a year in jizya, the Islamic tax for non-Muslims, and ISIS gave him a receipt). From his home he saw ISIS militants drown captives in a church courtyard, and heard sounds of beheadings in the night.

We in America hear so much about ISIS atrocities, we grow OK with the idea we can’t do much about it. It’s like 1933 when reports would dribble from Berlin. They’re confiscating Jewish shops and forcing them to wear armbands. Some of the Jews just disappear. Americans would talk about it over sodas at Woolworth’s and say, “Oh, how sad.” It was an ocean away, then.

Even with losing territory and potential setbacks, ISIS isn’t easily, or soon, going away.

But the analysts who call Islamic State an existential threat are right, and I will give you three reasons why. Even with losing territory and potential setbacks, ISIS isn’t easily, or soon, going away. Without a significant political and military strategy, we don’t need to be sad, or even horrified. We should be very afraid.

Propaganda. ISIS recruitment via social media and radio is 24/7 and growing in its global reach. In eastern Afghanistan it has commenced “Voice of the Caliphate” broadcasts the Afghan government has been unable to trace or shut down. “Caliphate Radio, where hell welcomes the conspirators of infidels,” the announcer begins in Pashto before launching into 90 minutes of Islamic sermons and Quran readings, calling on young Afghans to join a holy war.

Propagation. ISIS continues to hold about 3,000 women and girls in sex slavery, according to the UN and local Iraqi health officials I’ve talked to. This is an industry, and the lure of easy, “legal” sex with young women, even girls as young as 12 (“It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse,” reads one FAQ page from the ISIS Fatwa Department), is a recruitment tool for more fighters. It also produces something else: babies. Already some of them are toddlers, and soon they will begin indoctrination as ISIS fighters. A new generation.

Prosperity. The United States in 2004 established Iraq’s Central Bank and with it a cash-based economy largely run on U.S. dollars. For paper currency, the Central Bank draws on its account at the Fed, which is funded by Iraqi oil reserves. One hundred dollar notes arrive from New Jersey at the Central Bank in Baghdad, and they are auctioned against Iraqi dinars by financial firms. The amounts traded in the currency auction—think of it as similar to trading on stocks—have soared since 2014, and Iraqi investigators believe the Islamic State is using the system to earn dividends on what it has stolen from Iraqi banks ($100 million from the Central Bank vault in Mosul in June 2014).

One Iraqi banking official believes ISIS is making $25 million a day via dollar auctions. That’s in addition to millions of dollars a day earned for a sophisticated oil and diesel fuel smuggling operation out of Syria, plus selling off Syrian wheat and millions in ransom for kidnappings. It isn’t simply that ISIS has a fat bank account; it has high finance underway with the potential to keep its militants armed and trained.

What do we bring to such a long-term threat? A lot of public anger, limp posturing by our current president, and presidential contenders whose words strike me as unserious—silly, even—when compared with the terrorist conglomerate ISIS is constructing.

Email mbelz@wng.org