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Mosul Seized: Jihadis Loot $429m to Make Isis World's Richest Terror Force
- jacquesm 12y agoThat's enough to field an army of a considerable size in that region. It will be decades before the region will find a new stable configuration and there is absolutely no telling what that will be like. Stuff like this does not bode well for the future.
- lmg643 12y agoi would guess the sell off the advanced machinery like blackhawks for cash - let others strip them down to see how they are engineered. doubt they would have trained pilots or spare parts for repairs, which are the operating challenges of sophisticated deployed machinery. on the same note - the AK47 is popular in desert climes for its dead-simple architecture - avoids the headaches of fussier gear like an m-16.
- theklub 12y agoI smell Iraq war #3...
- dingaling 12y ago> That's enough to field an army of a considerable size in that region During the Angolan civil war, UNITA was earning over $150 million per year through diamond sales on the international market ( back in 1980s money ). In some years they tripled that. But it wasn't enough to maintain sufficiently sophisticated forces to resist the Government forces simply because when you're a pariah, training and experience cannot be purchased at any price. The Angolan Government was able to buy cutting-edge kit but more importantly could hire mercenaries and technical experts ( such as the Israeli team that tracked-down UNITA's leader ) that transformed their use of their equipment, whereas UNITA's kit largely went unused or underused once the South Africans had withdrawn their expertise.
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- myth_drannon 12y agoSuch a strange situation where US State department supports the same rebels in Syria, but when they cross the border to Iraq they fight US allies/US. Mind-bongling. Many times when I think about world news, images of "The Player of Games"/Banks novel popups in my mind.
- vonmoltke 12y agoThe State Department does not support ISIS. In fact, ISIS is the primary reason the Syrian rebels are not getting significant practical support from the West right now.
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- sp332 12y agoThey're moving south very quickly - they're fighting in Tikrit already https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27800319 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27800319
- jacquesm 12y agoAl-Jazeera writes that Tikrit has fallen: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/iraqi-city-tikrit-falls-isil-fighters-2014611135333576799.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/iraqi-city-...