Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.įor Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale.
If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.īut other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.Ī Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. “If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq - independent of foreign sources - are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.” For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know - three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein - about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments - previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy - paid $30 million in ransom last year.Ī copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.Īs much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. 25 - The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.
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