Bomb The ISIS Cash

By Micah Halpern

I've Been Thinking:
I just watched two videos. Both videos were almost exactly the same. One video was posted by ISIS, the other was posted by the Iraqi forces.

The videos showed a bank in Mosul after a bombing. US sources said that the United States targeted and hit the bank in the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul with 2,000 pound bombs. A 2,000 pound bomb would destroy whatever it hit. In this case it hit the al Zahour bank.

ISIS released their video as a critique of US activities. Iraqi forces show it as a hallelujah to the success of US forces.

Targeting and hitting the bank in Mosul is a very important change in US tactics. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq with a population of two million people. The city is located north of Baghdad very close to the border of Turkey and Syria.

The essential element of the story of banking in Mosul is that within the first day of ISIS taking over the city, they wired bank holdings back into the bank itself, automatically giving themselves control and use of nearly $200 million.

Over the next few weeks ISIS pulled the same stunt in the cities of Tikrit and Baji. Combine all three cities and ISIS probably secured nearly $500 million, or half a billion, dollars.

Today ISIS cannot use international banks - the banks would freeze the stolen money. Instead, ISIS actually keeps the cash in the banks, just like in the good old days before wire transfers and computers.

In order for the United States to strike at the heart of ISIS, they need to hit the money sources. The US has already started bombing several of ISIS' oil fields. And when they hit the al Zahour bank in Mosul, they destroyed not only the bank building, but the money that was in the bank.

There is almost no defense against a bomb of that weight. It leveled the entire area. ISIS will respond by taking money out of their other banks and spreading it out, making it harder for the United States and other enemy forces to get to the money, but also making it harder for them to monitor and control their ill-gotten money.

Hitting the cash was a very good idea. It should have been months ago. The big mistake, however, is that the United States didn't hit all the banks simultaneously. That would have dealt a crippling blow to ISIS activities.

Micah@MicahHalpern.com 

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