The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Targets Islamic State’s Growing Global Reach

The U.S. tightened its sanctions on Tuesday against Islamic State, adding 35 new names to its counter-terrorism blacklists, as it targets the organization’s finances. But the striking aspect to the announcement was its global quality: Individuals targeted by the U.S. Departments of State and Treasury on Tuesday hailed everywhere from Indonesia to Pakistan to the U.K., and Islamic State-linked regional groups sanctioned by the U.S. were based in the Caucusus, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Algeria.

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The global reach of the network underscores the challenges ahead for a coalition seeking to halt the group’s operations, said Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism financing analyst at Treasury who now is the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative anti-terrorism policy group. “The need for global cooperation is overwhelming at this point,” he said. In a written analysis, Mr. Schanzer also pointed to what he called Turkey’s “centrality” to Islamic State finance, noting that three of the people targeted were identified as having facilitated movement of fighters between Turkey and Syria. “While U.S. officials claim there has been a marked improvement in Turkey on this score, the Treasury designations tell another, more troubling story,” he wrote.

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