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Rampaging soldiers of the Islamic State may have been hit by economic crises as the group has slashed the salaries of its fighters by 50%, according to a CNN report.
ISIS operates as a government over parts of Iraq and Syria gives out biweekly paychecks to its jihadist army.
“On account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing, it has been decided to reduce the salaries that are paid to all mujahideen by half, and it is not allowed for anyone to be exempted from this decision, whatever his position,” the ISIS’ government wrote in a memorandum.
ISIS soldiers earn between $400 and $1,200 a month, plus a $50 stipend for their wives and $25 for each child, according to the Congressional Research Service. CNN claimed the pay cuts was indicated in a memo leaked from inside ISIS stronghold.
For an army that was earning $40 million per month form oil sales in early 2015, a state at war is expensive. And recent victories for the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS mean that the Islamic State can’t afford to pay its soldiers quite as much as it used to. The coalition has succeeded in bombing some of the oil trucks, storage tanks, mobile refineries and other oil field equipment used by the group.
Moreover, the US military “dropped two 2,000-pound bombs on a building in central Mosul, Iraq, destroying a cache of cash worth ‘millions”,” CNN said.
Despite the pay cuts, the Islamic State said it “will continue to distribute provisions twice every month as usual.”
