Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran Brett McGurk on ISIS

Reading a story, "Suicide Bomb Trainer in Iraq Accidentally Blows Up His Class," in today's paper the writers, Duraid Adnan and Tim Arango, note how much territory is currently under ISIS control:

Along with the increase in attacks on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and elsewhere, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other Sunni extremist groups have captured territory in western Anbar Province, and for weeks they have controlled the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital. Other areas of the country have also become strongholds of the Islamic State and of Al Qaeda. 

Terrorist training camps have been set up in the mountainous areas of Diyala Province. Northern Nineveh Province has become a gateway for jihadis traveling from Iraq to Syria. Mosul, Nineveh’s capital, has become a center of financing for militant groups estimated by one Iraqi official at millions of dollars a month, generated by extortion and other schemes. 

Suicide attacks make up an increasing share of the operations financed by this money stream. At a congressional hearing last week, Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, said 50 suicide attacks occurred in Iraq in November, compared with three in November 2012. “The suicide bomber phenomenon, it is complete insanity,” Mr. McGurk said.

I'm a little skeptical about the effort that is being made to argue that ISIS has created its own funding stream by means of extortion, kidnapping and other criminal conspiracies; it seems to be a way to obscure the fact that Al Qaeda in particular and Jihad in general is financially maintained by U.S. allies in the Gulf.

McGurk's testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week can be found on C-SPAN. A transcript of his statement can be found here.