PAUL JAY: Welcome to the Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay.
Thirty thousand barrels of oil a day. $19
million a month. That's apparently the revenues
that are flowing to the Islamic State. Its
oil exports flowing through Turkey. And now
and investigative report accuses Israel of
being one of the principal middlemen for Islamic
State oil. Now joining us to talk about how
all this works, and how it can work given
supposedly the bombing campaigns that are
going on, is Vijay Prashad. Vijay joins us
from Northampton, Massachusetts. He's the
George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian
History, professor of international studies
at Trinity College. His latest book is Letters
to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation.
Thanks for joining us again, Vijay.
VIJAY PRASHAD: Pleasure.
JAY: So first of all, what do we know about
how the oil gets out?
It seems a little bizarre to me that such
industrial-scale exports can take place without
all the various countries that are supposedly
attacking IS being able to stop this.
PRASHAD: Well, first I should say that there
are a number of reports and studies that have
been conducted. The Financial Times has done
some reporting. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has done
a major study on the I think 26th of November,
which they called Raqqa's Rockefeller. The
Russian government has released their own
paper on what they claim is going on between
the ISIS territory, Turkey, and Israel. I
did a report called ISIS Oil. So there's a
number of people who have been looking at
the phenomena of ISIS oil and how it's both
being taken out of the ground and where it's
going, how ISIS is able to make money.
The story is rooted actually in phenomena
that predate ISIS. In other words, there are
oil fields in northern Iraq in the Kurdish
autonomous region where for many years the
Iraqi regional government of Kurdistan has
been in some kind of competition with the
government in Baghdad, the central government.
And oil has been siphoned out of these northern
fields, these Kurdish fields, into, onto big
trucks, smuggled into Turkey. And then they've
gone out through [sehan] port, through Malta,
often to Israel.
So this is a rather old network that has at
least been going for 15 years or so. When
ISIS took control of these fields about 18
months ago, they simply used the same networks,
smuggling networks. They organized it, they've
created in Mosul a, you know, an institution
called Office of Resources, which controls
things that were as far afield as oil smuggling
to soft drink distribution. They do a variety
of things, this Office of Resources.
As far as the oil is concerned, they've, as
I said, utilized the old smuggling rings that
had been used by the Kurdish regional government,
so that oil travels across the border into
Turkey. There is some preliminary refining
that happens, because Turkey at least in this
respect seems to be rather particular that
you can only bring crude oil into Turkey if
you have a license from the Iraqi government.
If the oil is partly refined, then it can
cross without that license. So there's crude
refining of the oil. Bribes are paid at the
border. And the trucks cross over and dispatch
their crudely refined order onto trucks of
another smuggling network. So the first set
of trucks will return, essentially, to Mosul
and to the oil fields in Iraq, and some of
them in [inaud.] in eastern Syria.
Inside Turkey, the al-Araby al-Jadeed report
skims this over, but here the story is quite
fascinating. Because you know, yes, indeed,
al-Araby al-Jadeed shows that there is a influential
middleman. They call him Uncle Fareed. Fareed
had, you know, he has various names, who at
least takes charge of some of the trucking
networks. But once the oil comes into mainstream
Turkey, particularly in the three ports, one
in which is [sehan] port, which is run by
the Turkish government, there is a mysterious
company called BMZ which takes control. And
it turns out that BMZ has a familiar name
as one of its owners. And that's the third
child of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and
his name is Bilal Erdogan.
And Bilal Erdogan is one of the owners of
BMZ. BMZ recently bought two major oil tankers.
Why would they be buying oil tankers unless
the flow of oil had increased in recent months?
And they, through [sehan], take the oil out
to Malta, where it is, again, ship, put onto
a different ship, and it goes to Israel. From
where it is either consumed in Israel, or
it's laundered or sold out to European markets.
To that's basically how the oil flows.
What we don't quite know yet, and I think
what requires some investigation, is how the
finance works. You know, how the payments
are taking place. The banking networks that
are involved, et cetera. But most of the money
as far as the Islamic State is concerned,
up to the border with Turkey, is done in cash.
So there the question of banks don't apply.
That's essentially, you know, how the oil
travels.
JAY: Now, Vijay, in the--. In the Araby piece
they quote an oil official, a European oil
industry official, who says that without Israel
IS wouldn't be able to send its oil to Europe.
That Israel's playing a critical link in the
exports of IS oil. And then if that's true
it means Israel is playing a critical link
in funding IS.
PRASHAD: Well, you see, again this goes back
to the networks that pre-date the Islamic
State, or ISIS. Israel has indeed played a
role recycling or laundering oil from, illegal
oil, that has come out of the Kurdish regional
government for, you know, ten, fifteen years.
I mean, that is how Erbil, the northern capital,
has been able to get revenues by itself. And
that has been one of the real tension, reasons
for tension, between the Kurds in the north
in Erbil and the government in Baghdad.
So Israel has indeed been laundering illegal
oil from northern Iraq. They seem to not care.
They are agnostic, it seems to me, whether
that oil is being sold to them by the Kurdish
regional government, which is pro-American,
or by ISIS, which apparently America is against.
In either case, the Israelis seem quite happy
to launder that oil and provide, therefore,
the group, whether it's ISIS or the Kurdish
government, finances.
So yes, it is absolutely true that the relationship
between Malta and Israel is of the essence
here. Malta and Israel are joint partners
in exploring for oil fields. Some of this
is contested with the government of Lebanon,
because their waterways are ill-defined. You
know, these are two countries still at war.
So Malta is a partner with Israel in much
of the oil dealings. And yes, it's perfectly
reasonable to say that without Israel's laundering
ISIS oil would not be able to benefit ISIS.
JAY: Now, it's certainly the--if journalists
can figure out these routes the CIA must be
able to figure out--obviously you would think
Israel's Mossad. I mean, this can't all be
happening without everybody knowing. And if
in fact they're trying to close down IS, you'd
think they'd closed down the primary source
of their revenue. I mean, why wouldn't the
Israeli state step in, unless--it can't just
be about the money they're making out of the
oil.
PRASHAD: Well, Jeremy Corbyn asked this very
question during the parliamentary debate in
the United Kingdom over whether to bomb Syria.
He said, you know, what about the oil revenues?
Why aren't we looking into that?
This is what the Russians said when they provided
their brief, saying Turkey is a party to the
trans-shipment of oil from ISIS territory,
and why aren't they stopping this?
You know, at some level you imagine that this
is something that concerns deeply people in,
you know, the White House, et cetera, perhaps
the CIA. That they understand--they know that
this is true, because much of this is open-source
reporting. You know, this isn't, these are
not secret documents. This has not relied
on, you know, WikiLeaks-type leaks coming
from a government. This is, you know, relied-upon
old fashioned reporting, where for instance,
disgruntled Kurdish oil ministry officials
have talked openly with reporters about how
they believe that in Kurdistan the oil has
been leaking across the border into Turkey.
There are people inside Turkey who have talked
quite openly, but I think with a great sense
of trepidation given the crackdown on press
freedom. But they've talked quite openly about
the role of various Turkish companies in the
trans-shipment. And in the side of Malta,
there have always been very leaky, you know,
corporate people there who speak openly about
what's going on.
I mean, what you have to understand is that
there is a political series of contradictions
involved here, and not merely whether the
evidence is good or bad. You know, the United
States has a contradictory relationship with
Turkey. They are unable to push Turkey to
even close their border, to stop attacking
the Kurdish militias, which the U.S. government
say are one of the few forces capable of fighting
IS on the ground.
These are political contradictions. I think
within these institutions the U.S. government,
perhaps the Israeli government, there is some
debate going on about why they haven't responded
to something that is so obvious as trucks
driving through the Turkish landscape, taking
IS oil to Israel.
JAY: Now, you made a point in your article
that the Americans have done very little bombing
of these oil trucks. They kind of picked it
up after the Russians started bombing oil
trucks. How do you explain the Americans allowing
this kind of flow of funds into IS?
PRASHAD: Well, I asked somebody in the State
Department this. And you know, she's not a
spokesperson, not possible for her to speak
on the record. But she basically said something
that I found very unbelievable, which is that
it's taken them time to perfect their targeting.
They didn't want to hit civilians, they don't
believe that the truck drivers should be targeted,
that they themselves aren't, you know, a party
to IS. They are merely driving trucks. So
they had to finesse their operations.
Well, this sounded a little far-fetched to
me. The United States has not been known,
you know, as a humanitarian bomber when it's
bombed other logistical convoys in Afghanistan
or elsewhere. So this seemed a little odd
to me. Yes, it--of course, it appears directly
that the American bombing, the few bombings
now of oil convoys have followed the ration
bombings of the oil convoys. But you know,
I just want to say that even the bombings
of the oil convoys, it will have a dent on
ISIS's Office of Resources. But the vast bulk
of ISIS funding comes from confiscations,
extortion, and taxation. And that is not going
to be affected by aerial bombardment. So whether
they bomb the trucks or not, ISIS funding
is not going to be completely depleted.
What this attack at the ISIS oil is going
to do is to put pressure on groups--on countries
such as Turkey and Israel and others that
are playing a duplicitous game in this international
coalition against ISIS. I think that is far
more important. It's clarifying the politics.
Where does Turkey stand vis-a-vis ISIS?
Where does Israel stand?
JAY: Listen, we've been saying--and you and
I have talked about this, I've talked about
this in other interviews on the Real News.
But the fundamental strategy of the United
States and Israel in Syria was let everybody
kill each other, as long as it takes. In other
words, make sure no one side gets a real strategic
advantage over the other. And if one gets
too strong, strengthen one of the other sides.
Do you think this has something to do with
it, that they don't--you know, they don't
want a complete collapse of ISIS.
PRASHAD: Well, look, it's--. This is a plausible
scenario. I've never heard it from anybody
in a position of authority, you know, that
they feel that they don't want to see the
collapse of ISIS. But what they do say, which
comes close to that, is that destroying ISIS
itself is not going to give the Sunni population
of northwestern Iraq an sections of northern
Syria, it's not going to give the Sunni population
confidence that they, you know, their sort
of anxieties, their grievances, would be taken
care of. In other words, just allowing the
cities of Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, to be overrun
by the Iraqi army is itself not going to bring
that Sunni population to understand that their
needs would be taken care of by the Iraqi
state, and the same of course in Syria.
So this the American administration says quite
clearly, that they don't want to see a precipitous,
you know, move by what they see is a largely
Shia army overrunning Sunni parts of Iraq,
in particular. What they would prefer to see
is some other solution take place. And in
lieu of that, of course, you have the status
quo, where ISIS remains in control. So yeah,
I mean, I don't think there's a serious attempt
to break ISIS. You know, yes, they are having--doing
some strategic bombing raids against ISIS.
But there is nobody moving against them. And
in Syria it is so particularly fraught, because
the American government continues to dance
between acknowledgement that without having
the Syrian Arab army, in other words the army
of Bashar al-Assad, involved with the Kurds,
with other forces against ISIS, at some point
they say we need to, you know, help them.
At other points they say no, we need to also
get rid of Assad.
There's a kind of ambivalence in Syria which
has not been fully worked out. In fact, there
was a report recently that American planes
bombed Syrian Arab army fighters near [inaud.],
where they were involved in operations against
ISIS. The Syrian government in Damascus said
that you are operating against the air force
of ISIS.
Paul, it's so complicated. And it's very hard
to get the Americans to clarify what they're
doing. You know, at every turn the State Department
and other officials say contradictory things.
Unless they start to clarify what they're
saying, this is open field for all kinds of
conspiracy theories.
JAY: All right. Thanks very much for joining
us, Vijay.
PRASHAD: Thank you.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real
News Network.
