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The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) reports that U.S. and allied Arab countries aircraft attacked ISIL in Syria today, using a mix of fighter and remotely piloted aircraft to conduct 13 airstrikes against 12 ISIL-controlled modular oil refineries in remote areas of eastern Syria near Mayadin, Hasakah, and Abu Kamal.
The attacks are part of an effort to deprive ISIL of one of its major sources of revenue.
Centcom describes the refineries as providing “fuel to run ISIL operations, money to finance their continued attacks throughout Iraq and Syria, and an economic asset to support their future operations…Producing 300 to 500 barrels of refined petroleum per day, ISIL is estimated to generate as much as $2 million per day from these refineries. The destruction and degradation of these targets further limits ISIL’s ability to lead, control, project power and conduct operations.”
The Islamic State’s largely self-sustaining business network, which generates by some estimates as much as $40 million monthly, has made it the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world, enabling it not just to pay salaries to its fighters but to provide a range of services to its supporters. In addition to oil sales, the Islamic State’s revenue stream includes extortion payments from businesses in areas it controls, sales of confiscated property and duties on food and merchandise shipments that cross from Jordan into Iraq and Syria.
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The strikes on the refineries, which came shortly before midnight in Syria, were in addition to five airstrikes the U.S. launched against Islamic State targets earlier Wednesday — four in Iraq and one in Syria.
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Meanwhile, a French hostage kidnapped Sunday in Algeria became the first victim since the Islamic State issued a call Monday for its supporters throughout the world to kill Westerners in retaliation for the U.S.-led attacks. Herve Gourdel, 55, was beheaded by militants belonging to an al-Qaida splinter group, Jund al Khalifa, that has sworn loyalty to the Islamic State. The group had demanded that the French withdraw from the anti-Islamic State coalition.
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French President Francois Hollande confirmed the murder in an emotional speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York and vowed that France would not give in “to blackmail, to pressure, to barbaric acts.”
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“He was abducted, and he was beheaded,” Hollande said. “This is what terrorism does.”
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He challenged U.N. members with a question: “Will we remain spectators, or will we be actors together?”
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Hollande announced over the weekend that he would refer to the Islamic State only as “Daash,” an Arabic acronym that is considered derogatory. Those steps apparently factored into a statement Monday by the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Mohammed al Adnani, that singled out the “filthy French” for retaliatory killings.
Lead photo: An F/A-18F Super Hornet lands aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, after conducting strike missions against Islamic State group targets in Syria.(BRIAN STEPHENS/U.S. NAVY)
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.