GENEVA, December 8. /TASS/. The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group receives funds from selling not only Syria’s oil but also the country’s cotton and this trade is carried out via Turkey, Switzerland’s Tribune de Geneve newspaper has reported.
"Cotton is one of Syria's major resources and now it is in the hands of Daesh (Arabic for the IS)," the article published on Monday reads. This cotton passes through Turkey which gets it from the hands of middlemen who earn on this.
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The cotton is further used for making the clothes of Western brands and it is hard to find the origin of the material, the newspaper says. The players on this market are more interested in the quality of the goods than in its origin, the author says."The clothes that we buy often bring money (for the IS) for purchasing weapons used against innocent people and also for financing terrorism raging inside our democracies."
"The resources that Daesh gets (from Syrian cotton trade) come in addition to $2 million a day from oil incomes, the confiscated property of people who are robbed and killed and also to the earnings from the "industry" of abducting people for ransom," the article says.
According to the newspaper, the Islamic State has several sources of financing, which reaches $290 million annually. First, these are the citizens of the territory it controls (6 million people in northern Iraq and 2 million people in Syria) who pay 10% of their monthly salaries. The second source is oil, and 40,000 barrels per day allow the IS to get $800,000 with the price of as low as $20 per barrel. The IS also takes half of salaries of the Iraqi officials who live on the controlled territories, the report says.