The Resource Curse and ISIS

The Resource Curse and ISIS

Jon Burnsky

            A counterintuitive consequence of being well endowed in a high profit natural resource is that these states practically always have weak and unstable governments. This has come to be known as the “resource curse.” The recent expansion of ISIS controlled land and strength has been claimed to be caused by many things, and I believe that the largest and most overlooked factors are the very same ones that cause unstable governments to pop up in all states cursed with natural resources.

            Timothy Mitchell writes in “Carbon Democracy” that the causes of the resource curse are all rooted in western demand for raw materials; in the case of the Middle East, oil.¹ Since the 1800s western powers, mostly liberal democracies, have relied on massive amounts of resources to fuel their booming, industrializing economies. Western countries that already had sufficient amounts of these resources, oil in particular, were able to grow and prosper. Countries like the U.S., Canada, and Norway were able to fuel themselves, while others like the Germany, Denmark, and the U.K. needed to get their oil from elsewhere. Oil was quickly discovered in the Middle East and just as quickly the region was colonized and all the economic interests in the area turned to the quick moneymaking business of sucking up oil to sell to the west.

            This unwavering demand from developed nations to keep their machines running made for a sure means to make money. Naturally, the people who did control the oil fields were extremely rich but constituted a small percentage of the country’s citizens. Governments in the Middle East became accountable only to this rich oil-owning class. Whoever controlled the oil controlled the money in the country.

            ISIS gained initial support as an ideologically based Islamic state that would fight against all forms of foreign intervention and restore a theocracy in Syria and Iraq. ISIS calls for redrawing borders that would actually keep ethnic groups together and separate from others with whom they have historically quarreled. Like many other groups in post-colonial nations, the initial motivator is bringing together ethnic groups that were split up by colonial powers and kicking out unwanted groups that have been forced into the same state.

While this could start to look like ISIS gained power by convincing or coercing people in the region simply using this ideology, their funding is what actually makes them legitimate. Because of the weak governments caused in part by the nature of oil-rich countries and in part by the civil war in Syria, ISIS was able to quickly take control of oil fields and smuggle out oil in enormous quantities. ISIS controls 11 oil fields and one oil field that produces 75,000 barrels a day was captured by ISIS early on.² ISIS then sells the oil at discount prices, “$25 to $60 for a barrel of oil that normally fetches more than $100 — but their total profits from oil exceed $3 million a day…”²

            ISIS is a key example that states well endowed with natural resources cannot have stable democratic governments so long as there is demand for that resource. So long as the world runs on oil, any militant or authoritative regime that controls oil fields will get rich and further corrupt or simply supplant the government in place. The instability in the Middle East as well as other countries that are said to have the resource curse is caused not by the resources themselves or even the governments but instead by the market established by the western world.

¹ Mitchell, Timothy. “Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil”

² Mroue, Bassem. “Here's A Breakdown Of The Oil Assets ISIS Now Controls”

http://www.businessinsider.com/breakdown-of-the-oil-assets-isis-controls-2014-9#ixzz3GkmuuwKR