Even jihadists need a living (or dying) wage- IS has announced a round of pay cuts for its militants, halving their salary from £200 to £100 a month. The document released by their treasury revealed that this pay cut was due to ‘exceptional circumstances’.
While it refrains from explicitly explaining what these ‘exceptional circumstances’ are, one must note that Russia had initiated its bombing of IS command posts and oil infrastructure (one of IS’s main revenue generators) at the end of September– not a bad outcome for less than four months of strikes, particularly considering the fact that the US had a whole year’s head start and was still complaining that ISIS was growing ever stronger– claiming that Assad had to go before ISIS could be dismantled.
The US government would obviously claim credit for bombing IS oil infrastructure, but much like the “late” Walder Frey (Game of Thrones, anyone?) it was rather reluctant to attack those because it was apparently concerned about civilian casualties and environmental damage (even going as far as to warn IS oil truck drivers before dropping its bombs, and claiming Russian strikes as their own)… until of course Russia was already mid-way into its own campaign that is.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the IS pay cuts, the fact is that IS mercenaries- err, fighters, have been hit where it hurts; less pay means less money to buy sex slaves and cheap stolen stuff, forcing prospective and enrolled militants to reconsider the value of their promised 72 virgins when a US/Russian bomb inevitably finds them.
Sources: Daily Mail Online, Washington Post, Real Clear Politics, Time, Daily Mail, Altnet
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