Erin Banco Author

Erin Banco is a Middle East reporter whose first book is Pipe Dreams: The Squandering of Iraq's Oil Wealth. Banco has been covering armed conflict and human rights violations in the Middle East for six years. She began her career as a freelance reporter in Cairo during the Arab Spring. She covered the revolts in the region and the war in Syria. After graduating from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, she worked as the Middle East correspondent for International Business Times, breaking stories on the rise of the Islamic State group and on the Free Syrian Army arms program. Banco also traveled to Gaza to cover the war with the Israel in the summer of 2014. More recently, Banco began covering the Islamic State group's economy by tracking illicit oil sales in Turkey and Iraq. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and lives in New York City.