A group of men transporting diesel fuel from Syria into Turkey last year, an operation also used by jihadists to fund their operations. Reuters The Islamic State is funding its rapid push into Syria and Iraq with a labyrinthine oil-smuggling operation that starts at seized Syrian oil fields, goes through makeshift refineries and can end up in jerrycans carried by mules into the hilly borderland of Turkey. Amid Western pressure to squeeze the group’s finances, Turkey is expanding efforts to crack down on the increasingly organized business, which is now generating an estimated $2 million a day. A major route linking Syrian oil fields with the smuggling enclaves of southern Turkey offers a window onto the complexity of the oil network run by Islamic State, the militant group that controls large swaths of Syria and Iraq . It also demonstrates the challenges of shutting it down. “It clearly won’t […]