RAQA: While Syrian President Bashar al Assad was accusing the West of turning a blind eye to IS smuggling, a member of his parliament was quietly doing business with the group, farmers and administrators in the militants’ former stronghold said.
The arrangement helped the Syrian government to feed areas still under its control after IS took over the northeastern wheat-growing region during the six-year-old civil war, they said. Traders working for businessman and lawmaker Hossam al Katerji bought wheat from farmers in IS areas and transported it to Damascus, allowing the group to take a cut, five farmers and two administrators in Raqa province said.
Katerji’s office manager, Mohammed Kassab, confirmed that Katerji Group was providing Syrian government territories with wheat from the northeast of Syria through IS territory but denied any contact with IS. It is not clear how much Assad knew of the wheat trading.
Cooperation over wheat between a figure from Syria’s establishment would mark a new ironic twist in a war that has deepened regional divisions.
His office manager Kassab, asked how the company managed to buy and transport the wheat without any contact with IS, said: “It was not easy, the situation was very difficult.” When asked for details he said only that it was a long explanation. He did not return further calls or messages.
Damascus, under US and EU sanctions over the conflict and alleged oil trading with IS, strongly denies any business links with the hardline militants, arguing that the United States is responsible for their rise to power.
The self-declared caliphate they set up across large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014 has all but collapsed after Western-backed forces drove them out of their Iraqi stronghold, Mosul and surrounded them in Raqa, where they are now confined to a small area.
Russian and Syrian forces are attacking them elsewhere, such as Deir al Zor on Syria’s eastern border, where Kassab says he was speaking from, in a continuing struggle for the upper hand between world powers.
— Reuters
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