The Islamic State is reportedly handing out food and other humanitarian aid packages that appear to bear the United Nations World Food Program logo, according to photographs posted on websites affiliated with the terrorist organization.
The militant group is stealing rice, oil, medical equipment and other supplies delivered by the UN, relabeling the boxes with the group's own infamous logo and handing them out to refugees across controlled-areas near Aleppo, Syria, as "Zakat", a traditional Islamic almsgiving to the poor, Vocativ reported, adding that parts of the WFP logo remain visible in the images.
However, it remains unclear how ISIS, who has been accused of committing war crimes and human rights violations in both Syria and Iraq, got a hold of the aid packages.
"Distributing Zakat in refugee camp in the Qurmuz Ali village near Dar al-Fath," reads the caption underneath one of the published images.
The aid, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the United Nations, has recently began to flow into territories controlled by the jihadists.
By providing aid packages to its fighters and to the people in captured towns, ISIS manages to not only gain their loyalty, but also "doesn't have to divert cash from its war budget to help feed the local population or the displaced persons, allowing it to focus its resources exclusively on fighters and war-making," The Daily Beast reported.
"I am alarmed that we are providing support for ISIS governance," said Jonathan Schanzer, a Mideast expert with the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "By doing so we are indemnifying the militants by satisfying the core demands of local people, who could turn on ISIS if they got frustrated."
Aside from their looting practices, ISIS leaders also force international aid convoys to make hefty payments to gain entry into the eastern Syrian extremist strongholds of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, providing yet another income stream for ISIS militants.
"The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: The bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs," said an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity. "The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local nongovernmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it."
Additionally, the terror group demands that NGO's, both foreign and local, employ ISIS-approved people onto their staffs in Syria, according to an aid coordinator, Al-Arabiya News reported.
"There is always at least one ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us," said the aid coordinator. "And when a convoy is being prepared, the negotiations go through them about whether the convoy can proceed. They contact their emirs and a price is worked out. We don't have to wrangle with individual ISIS field commanders once approval is given to get the convoy in, as the militants are highly hierarchical."
Meanwhile, the WFP provided monthly food assistance to almost three million Syrians until December 2014, when it halted its program due to lack of funds.
