
ISIS cuts its fighters' salaries by 50% - pmcpinto
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/news/world/isis-salary-cuts/index.html
======
misja111
I have my doubts about the explanations given in the CNN article about ISIS'
recent salary cuts. CNN suggests that some of USA's recent bombings are the
cause of ISIS' financial problems. Oil transports have been bombed, cutting
off one source of ISIS' income, and a money depot has been bombed as well.

If this is true, then why does ISIS get into financial trouble only now? The
airstrikes in Syria have been going on already since September 2014. Did the
USA realize that they should start bombing oil transports only recently?

On the other hand, Russia has claimed to have been bombing oil transports
since the very start of their air campaign. Which happens to have started a
couple of month ago. Maybe I'm too suspicious, but to me it looks like ISIS is
getting into trouble because of the recent Russian intervention, and not
because the USA.

~~~
olympus
I obviously can't prove any of this since I don't have inside evidence, but my
theory (explained below) is supported by a few ideas reported by the news:

1\. When ISIS moves into a city they appropriate everything of value. During
their initial expansion they built up quite a war chest, but their expansion
has stopped for now so they are not adding funds that way. 2\. ISIS makes most
of its money by taxing civilians. The oil bombings are targeting the small
piece of pie, not the big piece.

Here's my theory: ISIS ran into a classic problem seen by several startup
companies. They saw initial success and had fast growth. They wanted to keep
growing so they recruited heavily. To recruit a lot of soldiers they promised
generous pay and benefits and even offered to support the families of soldiers
so dads could go fight. Their burn rate was astronomical, but was okay because
they were staying ahead of it through growth. But the growth ended up being
unsustainable, because competition arrived and contained them. They kept it up
for a long time because they had a lot of funding, but their burn rate finally
caught up to them since they haven't been able to keep growing as before.
Leadership did not/have not made the transition from wild startup CEOs that
give pitch talks and sell to investors into the sensible, sustainable CEOs
that manage a company in a saturated market with an eye toward creating a
mature company. Remaining in the mode of a wild growth startup company is not
an option for these guys. There is no viable strategy for a terrorist group
that says "we'll grow like crazy and then sell out to
Apple/Facebook/Google/Microsoft while we are popular and they'll handle the
maturity stages. Terrorists have to make the maturity transition themselves
because they can't be bought out.

~~~
woah
Perhaps they could grow to the point where they can make an alliance with the
US (we would do it for strategic reasons, like in the case of Saudi Arabia).
There would be a re-branding into the "Free Syrian Republic" or some such, and
the buy out would be complete. Assad out of power, oil controlled by the US.
It's what we wanted back when we gave ISIS (then known as the "Free Syrian
Army") their initial startup capital and weaponry.

~~~
bmelton
Watch out for signs that ISIS is hiring a PR firm (which is what Saudi Arabia
did) to convince us that they're the good guys, and whomever they're fighting
are the badder guys.

[http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html](http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html)

~~~
seivan
It's already been done that for Al Nusrah, though not by Saudi but Muslim
Brotherhood and Turkey.

Al Nusrah is the new hip and modern wing of Al Qaida. They are now so moderate
and progressive that only stone women using Fair Trade stones.

------
sveme
When you look at the picture and see the number of ISIS members that came from
Europe I cannot help but wonder what language they are using internally. Quite
a number of the recruits from Germany have a Turkish or German background,
some in the UK a Somalian, others a Chechnyan and apparently some even an
Asian (according to the pic in the article at least). I doubt that all of them
are capable right from the start of speaking Arabic, so what's the command
language? English? Hope so, cause that would be hilarious.

Obviously they had to read some Arabic when studying the Quran, but I doubt
that would be sufficient.

On a related note, Charlie Winter published a brilliant essay on the ISIS
media strategy on the BBC a couple of months ago, _Fishing and ultraviolence_
[1]. Highly recommended.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-88492697-b674-4c69-8...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-88492697-b674-4c69-8426-3edd17b7daed)

(edit: removed superfluous _and_ )

~~~
3pt14159
Dude, ISIL is _tiny_. They only have about 40k fighters, of which the vast
majority are Iraqi and Syrian. The majority of other supporters are either
Arabic or Turkish speaking, and usually with Arabic as a second language.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#Supporters)

Language is not the problem. They coordinate in Arabic, and usually if there
is a Turkish or non-Arabic cell, they usually have a single Arabic speaker.

Their primary problem that ISIL has is that they lack professionals
(accountants, engineers, computer scientists).

~~~
caskance
Why would they lack those professions? Aren't those some of the most likely
groups to become terrorists?

~~~
vectorjohn
Seriously? They will have no shortage of poor desperate stupid people to fight
and die for an insane cause, but how many computer scientists, who could work
anywhere in the world, want to go work for this insane organization?

~~~
caskance
A lot. A simple google search for "engineer terrorist" without the quotes
turns up plenty of references if you want to learn more.

~~~
vectorjohn
A terrorist is different than ISIS. They're not the same thing, and I just
don't buy that a lot of intelligent people are joining ISIS, although there
could be good ideological reasons to be a terrorist (none that I agree with).

------
mattdanger
NPR's Planet Money recently did an episode that analyzed a 1 month budget from
a Syrian province controlled by ISIS. The budget was all in USD and sounded
very thorough.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/04/458524627/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/04/458524627/episode-667-auditing-
isis)

~~~
nothrabannosir
That podcast answers a lot of the questions that people have in this thread.
Definitely worth listening to.

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_xander
Caution: article features autoplaying video with audio - hitting pause or mute
redirected me to a different page with the same autoplaying video

~~~
coldpie
Firefox has two settings to help with this problem. On the Plugins page, you
can set the Flash plugin to "Ask to Activate." Firefox also provides a
media.autoplay.enabled setting to prevent auto-playing HTML5 video and audio,
although it is slightly buggy because websites expect media to autoplay[1].

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1231886](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1231886)

~~~
hammock
You can also mute tabs in Firefox by clicking the little sound icon in the tab

~~~
exodust
How does that solve anything? Half the time we don't know videos are about to
play, then suddenly a blast of sound comes out of the page.

What we need is a way to mute the browser by default, with selective un-muting
of particular tabs once we decide we want to hear them.

An option to remember mute state for a whitelist of sites would be nice too.

I'm amazed browser vendors don't offer this. All the fancy features they
build, but this one has alluded them. Auto-playing videos are the worst thing
about desktop web browsing. I cannot think of a worse problem.

~~~
hammock
Good points. Here's an add-on which can mute by default
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-
tab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-tab/)

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cs702
The topic is serious, but when I read the headline, all I could think of is
that it seems to come from a Monty Python or Mel Brooks skit:

"We want revolution! But first we have to cut wages for the revolutionaries.
Sorry!"

~~~
jpreiland
I'm in the same boat. I suppose I'm partially living under a rock when it
comes to current events, but I hadn't considered the notion of salaries for
ISIS members and my first thought was that this might be from The Onion.

------
js8
In biology, there is a concept of metabolic rate and its relation to life
span. What if this applies to nations as well? Wartime economy means high
metabolic rate, which means that the nation will be only short-lived... Was
Orwell wrong when he predicted perpetual war as a way to manage dictatorship
indefinitely?

~~~
DasIch
1984 doesn't predict an actual perpetual war, just the believe in one. You can
see this working with terrorism quite nicely. Actual attacks are rare and
overall insignificant but nevertheless both parties believe themselves to be
in an important war and perform actions that help reinforce each others
beliefs and recruitment efforts. In reality it's really just a blood feud and
will end only once one side stops participating.

------
tyfon
How does one turn off the autoplaying video at the top right? When i click the
pause button it takes me to the video only, I just want to read the text not
watch some video..

This is in firefox btw.

~~~
js2
Article text:
[http://pastebin.com/raw/FHLMzS0a](http://pastebin.com/raw/FHLMzS0a)

~~~
tyfon
Thank you!

------
ehartsuyker
> ISIS also subsidizes the cost of bread for the public, experts say.

Honestly did not expect that. The world is more complex that portrayed.

~~~
pwthornton
This is not uncommon behavior from groups like this or even the old Italian
mob in the U.S. Doing humanitarian things like this with the locals helps buy
you support and protection. Hamas has done this for years (including schools
and healthcare), which helped buy it good will and even win elections.

A lot of times these groups are doing more for local populations in terms of
making sure they have food and basic necessities than the government. Usually
when this is happening, it's a pretty strong indictment of the official
government.

~~~
jerf
The line between organized crime and government can be surprisingly thin. I
actually don't intend this as a criticism of government; I intend it as an
interesting question to muse over. I believe it has good answers, but the
question is richer than you might initially think.

(For instance, you might be inclined to try drawing a simple line between the
two based on "the consent of the governed". Which is all fine and dandy at a
social scale, but what does that mean to you as an individual? Have you tried
removing your consent from your local government? The question is not as easy
as it may look at first. Even as, again, I want to emphasize that I think it
can be answered reasonably; just not _easily_.)

~~~
roel_v
Which organization would you use as an example for which it's not clear
whether they are 'organized crime' or a 'government'?

~~~
jerf
While I wasn't thinking of a particular case, ISIS is certainly an instance of
_trying_ to cross the line.

(Which I suppose also further underlines the point I want to emphasize about
how I'm trying to promote a food-for-thought question, not a value judgment.
Personally I find ISIS contemptible as an organized crime mob, and I find them
contemptible as a government. I have no plans to change my opinions based on
which side of the line they fall on. Which one are they on, though? Honestly
the answer probably varies by region at this point. You can make a case that
Westphalian-style countries are dead in the Middle East, and a stronger case
that they are at least trending down. Whether that trend will be permanent is
anyone's guess.)

------
nautical
For some time I thought money might be a reason for people to join ISIS , that
they might be paying shit load of money . But it seems they are not paying
much , 400$ per month is basically nothing !

~~~
mkaziz
A day's worth of labour means a $2 pay in some third world countries. That's
$60 a month, assuming you work everyday. Working for ISIS is a 6x raise,
though admittedly with much higher risk.

~~~
tyingq
Soldiers in a war zone also typically don't have to pay for shelter and
food...

------
GizaDog
How does CNN get all this insight on the inner workings of ISIS?

~~~
asdfologist
It's in the first sentence of the article.

~~~
GizaDog
according to documents leaked from inside ISIS territory.

No proof of these leaked docs.

------
pipework
That's going to make pistol round all the more important if you buy after
winning knife round. Right?

------
fokinsean
I really wasn't expecting "salaries" to be the fifth word.

~~~
randyrand
Wow you're not even original.

(^took this from Reddit)

~~~
fokinsean
Reddit took it from me

~~~
randyrand
=P

------
cm2187
They should go on strike

------
pofjer
Wut? I thought that "truth" was on their side. Why would they need salaries at
all then!?

~~~
nsxwolf
To pay for stuff.

~~~
pofjer
Being an ISIS fighter involves getting stuff for free, like… uhm, everything
they need to survive, so not sure what they need to pay for. But thanks for
the downvotes, guys. Thanks for understanding sarcasm properly. Thanks for
being objective. ;)

