South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al-Monitor on an address given by Department of Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen:
Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen said Oct. 23 that the US government is in “the early stages” of a complex campaign to cut off funds to the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) — an effort complicated by collusion between IS and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the refusal of Qatar and Kuwait to act against several known terrorist financiers.
Cohen, in a rare public appearance in Washington, told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the United States was also working with Iraqi authorities to try to prevent IS from using banks in captured territory without completely shutting down “all financial activity in those areas” and further penalizing their suffering residents.