Islamic State "business model" is failing: Report
Los Angeles : The Islamic State is soon going to be dead, according to a new analysis which states that the terrorist group is hemorrhaging money with every piece of territory it loses.
The analysis also notes that the group's "business model" is on the path to failure.
The report was presented by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.
In the report, the accounting firm EY noted that the caliphate's financial resources are drained and the revenue has since declined from up to $1.9 billion in 2014 to at most $870 million in 2016.
Peter Neumann, director of the center at King's College London states, "One of the mistakes that's been made in the past when we were talking about Islamic State was talking about it purely as a terrorist organization. It is a terrorist organization but it is more than that. It holds territory. That also means it has a lot more expenses. It needs to fix roads. It needs to pay teachers. It needs to run health services. It needs to pay for these things that al-Qaida never had to."
However, less money does not limit ISIS and makes it even more desperate and dangerous.
"We know from the attacks in Paris and Brussels and Berlin that none of them was expensive," Neumann said.
It is important to note that most of the recent attacks in Europe and the U.S. were all self-financed by citizens and required no help from the IS leadership in the war zone of Syria and Iraq.
Top sources of revenue for the Islamic State group include taxes and fees, oil, ransoms, and looting or other extortion.