Assad regime 'primary consumer of Daesh oil: US official

LONDON

A U.S. official has said that behind a seemingly conflict-ridden relationship between the regime of the Syrian president and the terrorist Daesh group, the two, infact, are engaged in a very lucrative oil trade.

"Asad regime in Syria is the primary consumer of the ISIL's oil, withstanding the fact that they are in open military conflict," Adam Szubin, US acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the BBC, using an alternative acronym for the terror organization.

"Each has something the other one wants and in this case money on one side and the oil on the other. They have been doing quite a bit of oil trade," he told BBC Newsnight on Thursday.

"ISIL is sitting on a tremendous amount of money. We need to be very candid about the risk as we cut of the access to its revenues. But the primary tool sources of funding have been oil sales and taxation you might call extortion from the population at the territory that they control," he said.

Szubin said unlike many other terrorist groups Daesh derives a relatively small amount of its funding from donors abroad.