The extremist organization that wants to terrorize the world into a global caliphate has started to dig deeper into its coffers just two months into a coalition campaign designed to cut off its cash flow.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) has begun to show signs of a weakened financial network just weeks after the US-led coalition intensified bombing missions to destroy the financial infrastructure at the core of the group's black market economy, analysts have said.   

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The coalition calls the latest phase of its bombing campaign against ISIS Operation Tidal Wave II, and it is specifically designed to bankrupt the extremist group.

The task is formidable.  Foreign Policy Magazine estimates that ISIS commands some $2 trillion in assets in the territories over which it has control. The New York Times meanwhile reports that the group earned some $600 million from tax and extortion rackets last year alone.       

US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren has nevertheless reiterated the objective of the anti-ISIS bombing campaign in an ironically succinct e-mail to the press: "We intend to shut it all down."

On the surface, the airstrikes under the campaign appear to be nothing new.  Coalition warplanes have been bombing ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq since September 2014.

What makes Operation Tidal Wave II different is the volume and variety of the targets it is designed to destroy. Whereas previous coalition bombing runs hit a few ISIS-controlled oil storage facilities and refineries each week, the new phase of the anti-ISIS air operation destroys several high-value targets in the ISIS financial network each day.

Last month, coalition bombers destroyed more than a hundred ISIS trucks and a number oil fields and refineries near the city of Deir al-Zour, Syria.  The region reportedly accounts for two-thirds of ISIS revenues from oil sales.  Analysts say the strike denied ISIS millions of dollars in revenues in one swoop.

Matthew Reed of the consulting firm Foreign Reports says the shift in the coalition's targeting strategy came after US Delta Force commandos killed extremist leader Abu Sayaff in a raid on an ISIS facility in al-Omar, Syria, last May.  Abu Sayyaf is said to have been a key figure in the terror group's illicit oil and gas operations.

In a report published by The Fuse, Reed says the raid -- which saw the commandos storming a building guarded by dozens of ISIS fighters -- yielded a huge trove of intelligence.      

"What we found out was that many of our strikes were only minimally effective," Warren said.  "We would strike pieces of the oil infrastructure that were easily repaired." 

While analysts agree that the ISIS financial network is still functioning and may yet sprout tentacles in Libya, they also say the extremist group is gradually running out of options. Foreign Policy Magazine reports that -- because the group's oil revenues have begun to dwindle -- ISIS tax collectors have started squeezing more money from people living in territories under their control.    

Professor Adam Chodorow, who teaches tax courses at Arizona State University, says the group's increasing reliance on taxation is a sign that ISIS is already struggling.

"They can go and take one or two of your goats, but eventually there are no goats left," Chodorow says. "I don't think they're going to be able to raise too much more money."

TagsUS, Iraq, anti-ISIS coalition, ISIS, oil field, bombing, Airstrikes, Syrian airstrikes