Earlier this month, the militants’ Beit al Mal, an ancient Islamic term which translates as “Treasury Department,” issued a statement announcing the plan. The coins, which they plan to fashion from gold, silver and copper, will be modeled on the 8th century currency of the Umayyad Caliphate.
At the time, experts expressed doubts the militant group had the technological capability and overall knowhow to produce their own modern currency for the territory under their control; roughly one third of Iraq and Syria.
A recent report in McClatchy, however, which draws on interviews with precious metal dealers in northern and western Iraq, would indicate the group is in fact moving ahead to obtain enough material necessary to carry out the plan.
One Fallujah-based gold trader, identifying himself as Hajj Samir, told McClatchy that foreign jihadists had been buying up all the gold and silver in the city’s markets. He said he alone had sold more than 15 pounds to known affiliates of the militant group.
“They said it was for gifts for their wives, but now I know why, and all the traders say the same thing,” Hajj Samir told the news portal.“We’ve been making trips to Baghdad to get more, and they buy all of it.”
Another 37-year-old trader who has worked out of Mosul told a similar story of selling off his precious metals to those connected to the group.
“We don’t ask why they’re buying so much,”said the trader, Osman Ahmed.
“But even silver in small shops outside the city is sold out.”
Ahmed said the speed with which they were buying up precious metal stocks was forcing traders such as himself to travel to cities in Kurdish-controlled territory to renew their stocks.
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