The shrinking caliphate
Foreign Policy: The Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate is no more, according to an Iraqi military spokesman, and a new report on the group’s shrinking revenue suggests he might be right. “Their fictitious state has fallen, ” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told state television . The group’s apparent collapse is backed up a study released Thursday morning that found three years after Islamic State declared its caliphate on parts of Iraq and Syria, it has lost 80 percent of its revenue and roughly two thirds of its territory. The report, by IHS Markit, a London-based information and analytics group, found the Islamic State’s average monthly revenue has fallen dramatically from $81 million in the second quarter of 2015 to $16 million in the second quarter of 2017 — an 80 percent drop. Revenue is down across all of the terror group’s income streams: taxation of the people under its control, confiscation of goods, oil smuggling and production, and trade in illegal antiquitie...