As the Islamic State (ISIS) has
risen to become a yearly $2-billion terrorist ensemble, it has found various
methods to reel in its revenue such as oil production, human trafficking, and
drug smuggling. However, it has been
revealed that there is yet another lucrative source for ISIS funding:
trafficking human organs.
According to a recent Al Monitor report addressing the various
revenue sources of ISIS, a doctor from Mosul named Siruwan al-Mosuli is
claiming that ISIS hired foreign doctors to run an extensive organ trafficking
system that has the potential to generate great profits. Mosuli, who is an ear, nose and throat physician
by trade, said he noticed something suspicious when ISIS leaders hired new Arab
and foreign medical doctors to work in their hospitals in Mosul and did not
allow the foreign doctors to interact with the local doctors. Mosuli claims that soon after, information was
leaked to him about organ selling. According
to Mosuli, ISIS takes organs from a variety of sources. He said the organs mostly come from dead
militants, whose bodies are quickly transported to the hospital. However, Mosuli said that ISIS also takes
organs from individuals they kidnap (religious minorities like Christians and
Yazidis).
According to the United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR), ISIS also sells the
bodies and organs of the injured individuals under ISIS arrest.
The ISIS’ organ trafficking system
would not be successful without the aid of external expert organ transporters,
or as they have been called – “networks specialized in trafficking human
organs.” Mosuli further added that the
network is a “specialized mafia” dedicated to organ smuggling and nothing else.
Although Mosuli said that organ
selling can yield outstanding profit, it absolutely requires coordination
between all parties involved … including the cooperation of hospitals and other
medical institutions in other countries … because the organs must be
transported and implanted in a timely manner. He added that without such coordination, the
success of the trade could not be maintained.
As the Assyrian International News
Agency points out, it is suspected that most of the organs smuggled out of
Syria and Iraq by ISIS are usually being shipped to neighboring countries like
Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
Although ISIS’ biggest revenue
gainer is their selling of over $1-million per day in crude oil, which they produce
from oil refineries captured in besieged towns, another massive ISIS revenue
producer is their human trafficking ring, which the UNOHCHR estimates has led
to over 25,000 religious minority women and children being either imprisoned or
sexually assaulted.
But another less-publicized revenue
source is ISIS’ drug smuggling ring. Al Monitor report finds that ISIS traffics
Afghan heroin into Europe from the city of Nineveh, which the Russian Federal
Drug Control Service (RFDCS) says is generating “significant revenues.” The service added that ISIS supplies half of
Europe’s total heroin consumption. “The
large-scale movement of Afghan heroin acts as an ongoing financial base aiding
the functioning of ISIS, which secures huge profits by providing half of the
total heroin supplied to Europe via destabilized Iraq and some African heroin,
which is sent from Iraq to Europe,” says RFDCS in a statement.
ISIS also makes money from smuggling
families and individuals into other countries. The report highlights one instance when a
family paid ISIS over $8,000 per individual to sneak them into Turkey.
While this explains how ISIS is
funded, don’t lose sight of the evil being rendered by ISIS and the need to
stop it without delay. Any one of these
means of funding these terrorists is bad in and of itself, and America must put
aside its governance by ‘political correctness’ and lead by the other P.C. – ‘principled
character.’
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
No comments:
Post a Comment