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The Islamic State's new money-making tool 0
Farmers harvest wheat in Falluja, Syria.
IS fighters and their allies currently occupy more than a third of Iraq and many areas in Syria.
Salah Paulis, a wheat farmer outside Mosul, fled with his family from IS advances early last month.
`We are in your warehouse. Why don’t you come back here and continue working?`, the man asked solemnly in Arabic.
When Paulis refused, the other person mentioned the punishment.
The extremist group now controls much of Iraq’s wheat supply.
IS uses wheat to fill its pockets, while depriving its opponents, especially members of the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities, of vital food supplies.
When the militants swept through northern Iraq in June, they took control of the grain warehouses.
IS currently controls all 9 granaries in Nineveh province, across the Tigris River, and 7 warehouses in other provinces.
Tricks to make money
To profit from wheat, IS confiscated rice from farmers, milled it and distributed the flour in local markets.
In early August, Saeed Mustafa Hussein, a Kurdish farmer watched through binoculars as armed IS fighters used their shovels to shovel wheat into four trucks, which then moved toward Arab villages.
He has 54 tons of wheat in a field in Pungina village, northeast of Arbil.
`The worse story is that I couldn’t stop this. I couldn’t do anything. They also took away two generators that my village only received from the Kurdish government,` Hussein said.
Another way for IS to make money is to mix wheat stolen by this group with civilian wheat and resell it to the Iraqi government.
In Makhmur, IS in July attacked a government granary with a capacity to hold 250,000 tons, equivalent to about 8 percent of Iraq’s annual domestic output in 2013. A few weeks earlier, IS had found a way
Abdel Rizza Qadr Ahmed, head of the granary, believes that IS forced local farmers to mix wheat from IS-controlled areas into their harvest.
A few weeks before the IS attack, the warehouse bought nearly 14,000 tons more than in 2013. The extra wheat was worth about $9.5 million, when estimated at the hypothetical price Baghdad typically pays
Ahmed said his task was not to investigate the origin of the product but just to carry out the transaction.
Huner Baba, the local agricultural manager, also believes that traders and farmers sold wheat harvested from other areas.
Take advantage of human resources
IS has replicated its growth strategy in Iraq and Syria in many ways.
IS also applies a similar policy in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Baghdad has also tried to limit upheaval to a minimum.
According to Hassan Ibrahim, head of the Grain Council, an agency within the Iraqi Ministry of Commerce responsible for purchasing wheat from local farmers, state officials in IS-controlled areas are in regular contact with the Iraqi government.
According to Mr. Ibrahim, IS fighters have disappeared from several areas in Mosul and Kirkuk because of US-led airstrikes.
`I instruct people to try to be gentle with the fighters because they are very violent people. Don’t be aggressive with violent people because they will probably kill you. Our goal is to keep
Buy people’s hearts
In some places, IS’s control of wheat appears to have won support from the Sunnis.
Ahsan Moheree, chairman of the Arab Farmers Association, a government agency in Hawija, said IS has gained support since the militants took over the area.
`They distributed flour to the Arabs in the area. They got the wheat from the warehouse in Hawija. They operated the mill and distributed it to people in a very organized way,` he said.
Even those fleeing IS see wheat as one of the things that makes the group strong.
`Today, a kilogram of wheat costs from 3.45 to 4.30 USD. Previously, its price was from 8.6 to 9.5 USD,` said Joumana Zewar, 54 years old, a farmer at the camp.
Zewar called a friend in Mosul to check the latest price situation there.
`The prices of food and bread are very low,` the friend said.
`Wheat is a strategic commodity. They are taking full advantage of it,` said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ association in Makhmur, a town near IS control between Arbil and Mosul.
`Surely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.`