The oil trade with Islamic State ought to come to an end

The argument

Proponents of this approach argue that finance and funding are where it hits hardest for militias of this kind. An armed group that holds ground must pay for the people and the machinery that keep it running, and the Islamic State has met that cost by selling oil to a web of buyers. On this account the trade is not an incidental revenue stream but the condition of the group's longevity: oil sales have bought the group's survival, and the buyers who take the product sustain the organisation as surely as any declared supporter. That is why proponents hold that the trade ought to come to an end. The mechanism they describe runs through the group's own production chain. Extracting, refining and moving crude requires skilled petroleum technicians and engineers, and such people must be paid. When the transactions stop, the funding required for keeping those technicians and engineers disappears; as they leave, production declines; and the decline in production strips the group of both the income and the practical capacity on which its wider operations rest. Without enough funding the Islamic State becomes a great deal weaker and, on this view, eventually ceases to exist. The argument matters for regional actors because it bears on the group's claim to be a state rather than a militia. An entity that can extract, sell and profit from oil can present itself as a functioning administration with revenues and an economy; one that cannot pay its own engineers cannot. Closing the market for its oil therefore does two things at once on this account: it removes the funding on which the group's military operations depend, and it removes the practical basis of its pretension to statehood, which is what delegitimising its existence requires.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Oil was one revenue stream among several, and not the foundation the argument takes it to be. Analyses of Islamic State's finances consistently found that taxation and extortion of the large population under its control was the bigger and more durable source — levies on wages, businesses, transport and agriculture, alongside seized bank assets, confiscated property, kidnapping for ransom and the antiquities trade. A group that could tax several million people did not depend on selling crude to survive. The prediction the argument makes has since been tested directly. Coalition strikes on wellheads, refining capacity and tanker convoys, together with the loss of territory, removed effectively all of the group's oil production by 2017–19. It did not cease to exist. It reverted to insurgency, financed by extortion, kidnapping and reserves, and has continued to operate. Losing the oil weakened it considerably — the argument is right that finance matters — but the specific claim that ending the trade would collapse the organisation did not hold. The mechanism also assumes an availability the situation did not offer. A substantial share of the oil was consumed inside the territory the group controlled and sold through smuggling networks operating across contested borders; ending those transactions was a matter of military and enforcement action rather than a decision that the regional actors addressed here could simply take. Finally, the argument sits awkwardly against the position it is filed under, which holds that regional actors must *delegitimise* the group's existence. Cutting a revenue stream is a coercive financial measure; it does not address the group's claim to religious and political authority, which is what delegitimisation means and what the position asserts is required.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Oil was one stream among several rather than the group's foundation: taxation and extortion of the population under its control, seized bank assets, confiscated property, kidnapping and antiquities also funded it, with internal taxation generally assessed as the larger and more durable source. [Rejecting P2] The prediction has been tested. The group lost effectively all oil-producing capacity by 2017–19 and did not cease to exist, reverting to insurgency; and much of the trade was internal or ran through smuggling networks that required military and enforcement action rather than a decision by regional governments.