Ben Taub writes:<\/p>\n
One of Russia\u2019s nine deputy defense ministers, said that recently collected images constitute \u201chard evidence\u201d that there is \u201ca single team acting in the region, composed of criminals and Turkish elites,\u201d who are buying oil from ISIS<\/small> \u201con an industrial scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced, \u201cWe have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil-supply lines to Turkish territory,\u201d specifically, those funding ISIS<\/small>.<\/p>\n
A defense minister went a step further. \u00a0 \u201cThis illegal business involves the country\u2019s senior political leadership, including President Erdo\u011fan and his family members,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe I\u2019m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one\u2019s closest associates.\u201d\u00a0 Erdogan\u2019s son-in-law had recently been appointed minister of energy and natural resources. \u201cOf course, the dirty oil money will work,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In fact, one of Russia\u2019s satellite photographs showed a very familiar place. I first walked through the Bab al-Salama border crossing in April, 2013, and lived within sight of it for the next two summers. Then, too, trucks often lined the road leading down to the border gates, many of them parked for hours while drivers napped in an olive grove nearby, waiting for inspectors to finish checking the vehicles ahead of them. On the Turkish side, fourteen thousand Syrian refugees lived in a container camp nestled against the border. Beyond the Syrian gates, a comparable number of civilians lived at a transit camp under wretched conditions. A system of hoses transported clean drinking water from Turkey into huge tanks at the Syrian camp, but there was no way to dispose of waste, and it gathered in puddles next to the road and ruts in the mud. Both camps sprang up from nothing, out of necessity, as people from Aleppo and the villages to its north tried to escape the war. (Fleeing didn\u2019t always help; in June, 2013, a Syrian jet strafed the transit camp, killing seven refugees.) Both camps are plainly visible in the Russian satellite pictures..<\/p>\n
The practice of smuggling at the Turkish-Syrian border is decades older than the war. Aleppo once belonged to the Ottoman Empire; when it was cut off from Turkey, in 1924, after the Treaty of Lausanne established most of the modern border, locals continued transporting all manner of goods from the cheaper side to the more expensive side.<\/p>\n
Syria\u2019s most potent oilfields are in the Deir Ezzor province, largely under ISIS<\/small> control. The group earns most of its money by taxing locals and confiscating valuables at checkpoints, but oil sales still account for hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.<\/p>\n
Last year, the journalist Mike Giglio found that much of the oil was coming through a smuggling post and originated in ISIS<\/small> territory, many miles away. It was transported by middlemen to a nearby area in northwest Syria. In Besaslan, traders received the oil through a network of buried pipes, while spotters looked out for police. They filled drums and sold them to local Turkish businessmen, who, in turn, cut secret deals with gas stations or set up illegal filling stops.<\/p>\n
The Turkish government maintains murky alliances with a number of Islamist rebel groups in Syria. In January, 2014, three trucks escorted by the intelligence services were found to be transporting huge quantities of ammunition to a camp frequented by rebels with connections to Al Qaeda, according to an arrest order for one of the drivers. The Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet<\/i> published a video of the trucks, and last week its editor-in-chief was arrested on charges of collecting and revealing secret documents. Erdo\u011fan insisted the trucks were carrying \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d for Turkmen in Syria, and personally accused the Cumhuriyet<\/i> editor of \u201cattempting to overthrow the government\u201d of Turkey.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ben Taub writes: One of Russia\u2019s nine deputy defense ministers, said that recently collected images constitute \u201chard evidence\u201d that there is \u201ca single team acting in the region, composed of criminals and Turkish elites,\u201d who are buying oil from ISIS … Continue reading ![\"Raqqa's](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/RaqqaRockefeller_0.png\")
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