ISIS

Submitted by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org,

News reports indicate that the notorious ‘Slaughterer of Mosul’ has been killed during air-strikes on ISIS in Iraq. ABNA reports: Local sources in Nineveh Province report that international coalition jets pounded ISIS positions in western neighbourhoods of Mosul on Saturday, killing a notorious judge from the ISIS court. ISIS Judge Abdullah Saffah, known as Abu Hafsa, was killed during the intense aerial raid. He was responsible for implementing Law in Mosul and had sentenced scores of people to death and stoning. He was known as “The Slaughterer of Mosul” by locals.

On Saturday, Bakr al-Baghdadi released a rare audio recording in which the ISIS leader threatened Israel (“we are getting closer to you everyday”), insisted that the Russian air campaign had not weakened the group (“hear the good news that our state is doing well"), and called upon Muslims to join the caliphate and take up arms against its enemies. 

In our classic piece “ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection,” we discussed how Masoud Barzani and the Iraqi Kurds transport some 600,000 b/d of crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan in defiance of SOMO amid an ongoing budget dispute between Baghdad and Erbil.

Turkey facilitates this trade and we suggested that ISIS (which Turkey is suspected of supporting in order that the group might continue to destabilize Assad) may be using the same networks to get its illicit oil to market. 

Over the past five weeks, Turkey’s role in facilitating the trafficking of illicit Islamic State crude has been exposed for the world to see. Ankara’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border prompted a media blitz from Moscow, which has variously accused the Erdogan government of being complicit in a business that nets Bakr al-Baghdadi between $500 million and $1 billion per year in revenue.