Countering Isis Finances

Starting in 2015, the US-led coalition against ISIS began to target ISIS’s financial infrastructure. These efforts led to a loss of revenue, a drop in morale, and the desertion of fighters, and contributed to the overall success against ISIS. This was arguably the single greatest strategic success of counter-terrorist financing operations, yet it has gone largely unnoticed and unstudied. This article first provides a summary of the financial portfolio of ISIS—their overall revenue, sources, of income, and expenditures. The next section describes the decisions and debates to focus resources and materials to target the ISIS financial infrastructure. This section will rely on publicly available information as well as interviews with those involved in these decisions. The subsequent section will demonstrate the effectiveness of this effort in degrading ISIS financing and its larger organizational coherence and effectiveness. The final section will consider whether this example of success can be replicated in other campaigns against other terrorist groups

Political science · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence