Islamic State's Risky Business
Its leader may be attracting murderous support, but he has a vulnerability: the predatory financing of his caliphate
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel spoke of “an imminent threat to every interest we have.” Senator James Inhofe asserted that “we are in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation.” Former Marine four-star General John Allen went further, saying “World War III is at hand.”
The cause of these alarms is Islamic State, a swarm of murderers led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Little is known of him. The name isn’t his real one. He spent the past eight years rising through the ranks of Iraq’s jihadist underground to become its commander and most recently the self-proclaimed leader of Islamic State. He’s both a product and a creator of the region’s chaos.