Islamic State on back foot in its caliphate and online

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

There are welcome signs that the fight against Islamic State is gaining ground, with the edges of its “caliphate” falling to Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian forces, its interior blasted by targeted bombing that has squeezed IS finances, and the flow of foreign fighters — thought to have totalled 27,000 to 31,000 — having slowed to a trickle since Turkey stepped up border controls.

Its slick, despicable propaganda machine is also on the back foot thanks to a crackdown by social media carriers and its own ban on personal internet use. Analysts say both the quantity and quality of productions has decreased.

IS became the richest terror organisation in history when its forces swarmed out of Syria and took over Iraq’s second city of Mosul in June 2014 — plundering its banks and taking over significant heavy industry. It also controls the bulk of Syria’s oil, having seized 160 fields there.

Earlier this year the caliphate’s GDP was estimated at $6 billion.

A new report by global insight consultancy IHS estimates total monthly revenue for IS is now about $US80m, over 70 percent of which is spent on its army.

About half comes from taxes on commercial activities and services within the areas IS controls (which include 7m people), 43 percent from oil revenue and the rest from drug smuggling, selling electricity and donations.

IHS notes tax revenues are hard to target but that the US-led coalition’s airstrikes have significantly degraded the group’s oil refining capacity and ability to transport oil via tanker convoys. Total oil production has reportedly fallen from 100,000 barrels a day to below 40,000.

IS’s defeat by Kurdish forces at Tal Abyad on the Syrian-Turkish border in June, and Turkey’s efforts to stop smuggling, have also forced it to rely increasingly on internal markets in Syria and Iraq to smuggle and sell oil.

IHS sees signs the group is struggling to balance its budget, including cuts to fighters’ salaries, price hikes on electricity and other basic services, and the introduction of new taxes.

The Islamic State caliphate is losing its appeal.