{"id":49000,"date":"2014-10-27T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49000"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:36","slug":"u-s-humanitarian-aid-going-to-isis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/u-s-humanitarian-aid-going-to-isis\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Humanitarian Aid Going to ISIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"us<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Not only are foodstuffs, medical supplies\u2014even clinics\u2014going to ISIS, the distribution networks are paying ISIS \u2018taxes\u2019 and putting ISIS people on their payrolls.<\/em><\/p>\n

While U.S. warplanes strike at the militants of the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, truckloads of U.S. and Western aid has been flowing into territory controlled by the jihadists, assisting them to build their terror-inspiring \u201ccaliphate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aid\u2014mainly food and medical equipment\u2014is meant for Syrians displaced from their hometowns, and for hungry civilians. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the United Nations. Whether it continues is now the subject of anguished debate among officials in Washington and European. The fear is that stopping aid would hurt innocent civilians and would be used for propaganda purposes by the militants, who would likely blame the West for added hardship.<\/p>\n

The Bible says if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him something to drink\u2014doing so will \u201cheap burning coals\u201d of shame on his head. But there is no evidence that the militants of the Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, feel any sense of disgrace or indignity (and certainly not gratitude) receiving charity from their foes.<\/p>\n

Quite the reverse, the aid convoys have to pay off ISIS emirs (leaders) for the convoys to enter the eastern Syrian extremist strongholds of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, providing yet another income stream for ISIS militants, who are funding themselves from oil smuggling, extortion, and the sale of whatever they can loot, including rare antiquities<\/a> from museums and archaeological sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: The bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,\u201d says an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local nongovernmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we doing here helping their fighters, who we are bombing, to be treated so they can fight again?\u201d<\/p>\n

And there are fears the aid itself isn\u2019t carefully monitored enough, with some sold off on the black market or used by ISIS to win hearts and minds by feeding its fighters and its subjects. At a minimum, the aid means ISIS doesn\u2019t have to divert cash from its war budget to help feed the local population or the displaced persons, allowing it to focus its resources exclusively on fighters and war-making, say critics of the aid.<\/p>\n

One of the striking differences between ISIS and terror groups of the past is its desire to portray the territory it has conquered as a well-organized and smoothly functioning state<\/a>. \u201cThe soldiers of Allah do not liberate a village, town, or city, only to abandon its residents and ignore their needs,\u201d declares the latest issue of Dabiq, the group\u2019s slick online magazine. Elsewhere in the publication are pictures of slaughtered Kurdish soldiers and a gruesome photograph of American journalist Steven Sotloff\u2019s severed head resting on top of his body. But this article shows ISIS restoring electricity in Raqqah, running a home for the elderly, a cancer-treatment facility in Ninawa, and cleaning streets in other towns.<\/p>\n

Last year, a polio outbreak<\/a> in Deir ez-Zor raised concerns throughout the region about the spread of an epidemic. The World Health Organization worked with the Syrian government and with opposition groups to try to carry out an immunization campaign. This has continued. In response to a query by The Daily Beast, a WHO spokesperson said, \u201cOur information indicates that vaccination campaigns have been successfully carried out by local health workers in IS-controlled territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am alarmed that we are providing support for ISIS governance,\u201d says Jonathan Schanzer, a Mideast expert with the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. \u201cBy doing so we are indemnifying the militants by satisfying the core demands of local people, who could turn on ISIS if they got frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. and Western relief agencies have been caught before in an aid dilemma when it comes to the war on terror. Last December, the Overseas Development Institute, an independent British think tank focusing on international development and humanitarian issues, reported that aid agencies in Somalia had been paying militants from the al Qaeda offshoot al-Shabab for access to areas under their control during the 2011 famine.<\/p>\n

Al-Shabab demanded from the agencies what it described as \u201cregistration fees\u201d of up to $10,000. And in many cases al-Shabab insisted on distributing the aid, keeping much of it for itself, according to ODI. The think tank cited al-Shabab\u2019s diversion of food aid in the town of Baidoa, where it kept between half and two-thirds of the food for its own fighters. The researchers noted the al Qaeda affiliate developed a highly sophisticated system of monitoring and co-opting the aid agencies, even setting up a \u201cHumanitarian Co-ordination Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something similar appears to be underway now in the Syrian provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.<\/p>\n

Aid coordinators with NGOs partnering USAID and other Western government agencies, including Britain\u2019s Department for International Development, say ISIS insist that the NGOs, foreign and local, employ people ISIS approves on their staffs inside Syria. \u201cThere is always at least one ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us,\u201d says an aid coordinator. \u201cAnd when a convoy is being prepared, the negotiations go through them about whether the convoy can proceed. They contact their emirs and a price is worked out. We don\u2019t have to wrangle with individual ISIS field commanders once approval is given to get the convoy in, as the militants are highly hierarchical.\u201d He adds: \u201cNone of the fighters will dare touch it, if an emir has given permission.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad_____________________________<\/p>\n

Jamie Dettmer is an independent American-British foreign correspondent. He has worked for <\/em>The Times of London<\/em>, <\/em>Sunday Telegraph<\/em>, and several U.S., Irish and Scottish newspapers and has reported from the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Currently, as well as contributing to the Daily Beast, he also reports for <\/em>Voice of America<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thedailybeast.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not only are foodstuffs, medical supplies\u2014even clinics\u2014going to ISIS, the distribution networks are paying ISIS \u2018taxes\u2019 and putting ISIS people on their payrolls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}