Iraq insurgency now financially self-sustaining: NYT

[ProSense]

Iraq insurgency now financially self-sustaining: NYT

27 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Iraq insurgency has become financially self-sustaining, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

According to a classified United States government report, a copy of which was obtained by the newspaper, groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising an estimated $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities.

Some $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by "corrupt and complicit" Iraqi officials, the Times said, citing the report.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid over hundreds of kidnappings. Unnamed foreign governments -- identified in the past by senior U.S. officials as including France and Italy -- paid kidnappers $30 million in ransom last year alone, the report said.

Snip...

The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven as Afghanistan became under the Taliban, the Times said, adding that that suggestion was one of many aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government.

According to the Times, the report also said that U.S. efforts to follow the insurgency financing trails have been hampered by a weak Iraqi government and its new intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between U.S. agencies and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, chiefly driven by manual money transfers rather than more easily traceable means.

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More false claims/lip service

[ProSense]

1. "no distinction is made between 'insurgents,' 'terrorists,' and other militant groups in Iraq"

From Talking Points:

A HARD-TO-UNDERSTAND story in tomorrow's New York Times on a secret U.S. report that finds Iraqi insurgent groups are self-financing.

What makes the piece murky is no distinction is made between "insurgents," "terrorists," and other militant groups in Iraq. Maybe that's the approach of the secret report that the NYT piece is based on. But it would seem to me that lumping all of the various armed factions in Iraq into one category called "the insurgency" would be to miss many important differences in the goals and strategies--and the means of funding--of the many disparate groups currently operating in Iraq.

For instance, one of the secret report's more surprising conclusions, according to The Times, is "that terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.” It seems counterintuitive that the armed Shiite and Sunni militias battling for control of Iraq would be financing terrorists outside of Iraq while the battle inside of Iraq still hangs in the balance.

In fairness, The Times makes clear that the secret report may be flawed: "Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times, criticized it for a lack of precision and a reliance on speculation."

The overwhelming impression I'm left with from the piece is that more than three and half years after ostensibly seizing control of Iraq, the U.S. government is still largely ignorant of the armed groups arrayed against its efforts there.

Al Sadr is al Qaeda?