Iraq News
Terrorism

ISIL struggles to meet its financial obligations

By Khalid al-Taie

Syrian antiquities department director Maamun Abdul-Karim shows two busts rescued from the 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' in Palmyra at the National Museum in Damascus on March 1st, along with others awaiting restoration. The busts are perhaps the only such artefacts to have left the site without being stolen. ISIL seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically loot its archaeological treasures. [Louai Beshara/AFP]

Syrian antiquities department director Maamun Abdul-Karim shows two busts rescued from the 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' in Palmyra at the National Museum in Damascus on March 1st, along with others awaiting restoration. The busts are perhaps the only such artefacts to have left the site without being stolen. ISIL seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically loot its archaeological treasures. [Louai Beshara/AFP]

The "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) has been struggling to meet its financial obligations to its fighters and to the families of fighters who have been killed in battle or suicide attacks, Iraqi officials tell Diyaruna.

According to numerous reports, ISIL used to pay a monthly base salary of between $250 and $300 to fighters who had served the group for two years.

In the group's heyday, married ISIL fighters were given an additional 75,000 Iraqi dinars ($64) for each wife and 25,000 dinars ($21) per child, security adviser Fadel Abu Ragheef told Diyaruna.

The group used to offer $1,500 to fighters seeking marriage to cover a bride's dowry, in addition to fronting the fighter's accommodation expenses, he said.

It also paid out between $400 and $1,000 to widows whose husbands had been killed in battle or by carrying out suicide attacks, based on the number of dependent children and the status of the deceased fighter, he added.

Lately, he said, these salaries and additional allocations, which the group refers to as "guarantees" have dropped to less than a third of their former value, due to a shortage of funds.

The reduction in pay has even affected the commanders of fighting units, or "emirs", he added, whose monthly salaries have fallen from between $7,000 and $12,000 to around $2,000.

Smuggling operations suspended

In addition to reducing salaries and benefits, ISIL has reportedly suspended the operation of the office responsible for monitoring the extraction, smuggling and sale of oil and artefacts, which have brought in millions in revenue.

Proceeds from these smuggling operations used to cover the bulk of the group's expenses for its fighters and their families.

Abu Ragheef said ISIL's loss of control over most of the roads and supply networks along the border with Syria also have deprived the group of millions of dollars it used to collect by imposing fees and levies on trade.

"It currently relies mainly on collecting from merchants, shop and property owners and tradesmen," he said, adding that ISIL's "Office of Zakat" handles this collection.

Faced with a suffocating financial crisis that has left it unable to meet its basic obligations, the group has devised the idea of "self-financing" to evade its financial burdens, Abu Ragheef said.

In other words, ISIL elements who are well-off give up their share of the salaries to other elements who need it more, he explained.

"The group is awash in big problems and its vaults are running empty," he said.

ISIL's finances are deteriorating

According to officials in al-Qaim, one of the few cities in Iraq that is still under ISIL's control, the group's finances are deteriorating, and the benefits and rewards fighters and their families used to receive have been suspended.

Faced with insolvency, ISIL is now paying its rank-and-file fighters a salary that "does not exceed $100 at best", al-Qaim mayor Farhan Fitaikhan told Diyaruna.

Austerity measures also have been applied to the funds the group uses to pay off to secret informants, known as "eyes", he said.

Payments have fallen from a few thousand dollars for intelligence information to around 15,000 Iraqi dinars ($13) for informing on a former member of the Iraqi security forces, Fitaikhan said.

ISIL's shortage of cash has seen it tearing up electricity towers, cables and railway lines and smuggling them to Syria to sell as scrap, he said.

The group also has resorted to stealing and selling materials from state companies "such as phosphate and cement factories", he said.

"[ISIL] has lost all the resources that brought it money: oil, antiquities, border trade and state property," Ninawa provincial council security committee member Binyan al-Jarba told Diyaruna.

"The group is not as rich as it was two years ago, and no longer gives its members and families of its elements lavish salaries," he said. "It is completely trapped, and its financial savings are declining day after day."

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Correct words! The same Baath style, and the strange thing is that they are Baathist bastards.

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Where is their Prophet and why he does not help them, hunger does not know religion and faith, hhhhh the Islam's black force has been defeated and caught the balls of (Bashar Al-Assad).

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