DUSHANBE, October 15, 2015, Asia-Plus – An article “Isis Inc: How Oil Fuels the Jihadi Terrorists” that was posted on The Financial Times’ website on October 14 notes that on the outskirts of al-Omar oilfield in eastern Syria, with warplanes flying overhead, a line of trucks stretches for 6km. Some drivers wait for a month to fill up with crude.

Falafel stalls and tea shops have sprung up to cater to the drivers, such is the demand for oil. Traders sometimes leave their trucks unguarded for weeks, waiting for their turn.

This is the land of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the jihadi organization in control of swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.  The trade in oil has been declared a prime target by the international military coalition fighting the group.  And yet it goes on, undisturbed.

Oil is the black gold that funds ISIL’s black flag — it fuels its war machine, provides electricity and gives the fanatical jihadis critical leverage against their neighbors.

But more than a year after US President Barack Obama launched an international coalition to fight ISIL, the bustling trade at al-Omar and at least eight other fields has come to symbolize the dilemma the campaign faces: how to bring down the “caliphate” without destabilizing the life of the estimated 10 million civilians in areas under ISIL control, and punishing the west’s allies?

The resilience of ISIL, and the weakness of the US-led campaign, have given Russia a pretext to launch its own, bold intervention in Syria.

Despite all these efforts, dozens of interviews with Syrian traders and oil engineers as well as western intelligence officials and oil experts reveal a sprawling operation almost akin to a state oil company that has grown in size and expertise despite international attempts to destroy it.

Minutely managed, ISIL’s oil company actively recruits skilled workers, from engineers to trainers and managers.

Estimates by local traders and engineers put crude production in Isis-held territory at about 34,000-40,000 bpd. The oil is sold at the wellhead for between $20 and $45 a barrel, earning the militants an average of $1.5m a day.

ISIL’ oil strategy has been long in the making. Since the group emerged on the scene in Syria in 2013, long before they reached Mosul in Iraq, the jihadis saw oil as a crutch for their vision for an Islamic state. The group’s shura council identified it as fundamental for the survival of the insurgency and, more importantly, to finance their ambition to create a caliphate.

Most of the oil ISIL controls is in Syria’s oil-rich east, where it created a foothold in 2013, shortly after withdrawing from the north-west — an area of strategic importance but with no oil.  These bridgeheads were then used to consolidate control over the whole of eastern Syria after the fall of Mosul in 2014.

ISIL’s strategy has rested on projecting the image of a state in the making, and it is attempting to run its oil industry by mimicking the ways of national oil corporations.  According to Syrians who say ISIL tried to recruit them, the group headhunts engineers, offering competitive salaries to those with the requisite experience, and encourages prospective employees to apply to its human resources department.

ISIL also recruits from among its supporters abroad.  In the speech he gave after the fall of Mosul, ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called not only for fighters but engineers, doctors and other skilled labor.  The group recently appointed an Egyptian engineer who used to live in Sweden as the new manager of its Qayyara refinery in northern Iraq, according to an Iraqi petroleum engineer from Mosul, who declined to be named.

Oversight of the oil wells is carefully controlled by the Amniyat, ISIL’s secret police, who ensure revenues go where they should — and mete out brutal punishments when they do not.  Guards patrol the perimeter of pumping stations, while far-flung individual wells are surrounded by protective sand berms and each trader is carefully checked as he drives in to fill up.

At the al-Jibssa field in Hassakeh province, north-eastern Syria, which produces 2,500-3,000 bpd, “about 30-40 big trucks a day, each with 75 barrels of capacity, would fill up”, according to one Hassakeh oil trader.

But the biggest draw is al-Omar. According to one trader who regularly buys oil there, the system, with its 6km queue, is slow but market players have adapted to it.  Drivers present a document with their license plate number and tanker capacity to Isis officials, who enter them into a database and assign them a number.

Most then return to their villages, shuttling back to the site every two or three days to check up on their vehicles.  Traders say that towards the end of the month, some people come back and set up tents to stay close to their trucks while they wait their turn.

Once in possession of al-Omar’s oil, the traders either take it to local refineries or sell it on at a mark-up to middlemen with smaller vehicles who transport it to cities further west such as Aleppo and Idlib.

ISIL’s luck with oil may not last.  Coalition bombs, the Russian intervention and low oil prices could put pressure on revenues.  The biggest threat to ISIL’s production so far, however, has been the depletion of Syria’s ageing oilfields.  It does not have the technology of major foreign companies to counteract what locals describe as a slow drop in production.  ISIL need for fuel for its military operations means there is also less oil to sell in the market.

For now, though, in ISIL-controlled territory, the jihadis control the supply and there is no shortage of demand.