(Politico) Howard J. Shatz - Iraq continues to fund ISIS by continuing salaries to the many Iraqi government employees who live in ISIS-controlled territory. ISIS skims the money Iraq continues to pay these public employees, estimated to total hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Yet ending payments to employees, effectively cutting off money to ISIS, would create a humanitarian problem. It would also give ISIS a propaganda victory, signalling to the largely Sunni recipients in ISIS-controlled areas that the largely Shia government in Baghdad is abandoning them and that ISIS is their only protection. The writer is senior economist at the RAND Corporation.
2015-05-26 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive