I don't think "doesn't want innocent people to starve to death" and "wants to cut off someone's head because of their religion" are mutually exclusive.
"Doesn't want innocent people to starve to death" and "Doesn't want people to go hungry and start rising up against you" look pretty similar from the outside...
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.
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.)
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.)
This largely comes down to the state being primarily defined as a monopoly of force. When non-state actors end up wielding the most threat of force, then collective decision-making is effectively deferred to those most capable of enforcing its will.
This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.
> This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.
If a government is formed, shadow or not, wouldn't that necessitate removal of the "anarcho" qualifier?
In a similar vein, it seems to me that the term "anarcho-anything state" is logically inconsistent, unless one exclusively uses the "chaos; disorder" definition for "anarcho-" instead of the "without rulers" definition.
I've mused over the same thing. A conclusion I have is that the only real difference is their perceived legitimacy. If we call one a state and another gang, we are really attaching legitimacy values to them.
Absolutely. There are only benefits in acquiring the support from the local population, specially when people feel "neglected" by their current official government. This happens a lot in Brazilian poorest locations, where drug dealing gangs mix violence with "community support", creating a combination of fear and "acceptance" in the locals, getting them not only to not help the police, but also to "accept" their relatives getting into crime, as if it wasn't "completely wrong". There is also special behavior targeted at children, in order to drag them to crime later (or as soon as possible).
It clearly shows the group's violent rhetoric and uncompromising ideology, but also illustrates that ISIS is far more than a war machine. They are trying to create a nation, and that includes civic law enforcement and social services. For many people in the conquered regions, it represents more stability than whatever was there before. Of course, there are many others who are terrorized by ISIS (typically because they do not adhere to the correct brand of religion in the correct way) but it's important to remember that there is a fair-sized contingent of civilians on the ground who welcome ISIS.
I heard an interview the other day from one of those civilians. Before ISIS, they had a dozen competing militias screwing around, and they never knew who was on top or which one they'd have to deal with at any particular moment or what they might want. With ISIS there's exactly one group in charge and they know exactly what that group wants. I don't know that this person welcomed ISIS, per se, but they saw it as a substantial improvement over what was before.
I think a lot of these people would prefer a strong, sane national government that isn't at war with everybody and lets people live their lives. But that doesn't seem to be an option, and ISIS is the best they've had recently.
Muslims (Sunni) will always welcome groups like ISIS because it offers what they want: Sharia laws, kuffr sex-slaves and etc.
Arab sunni muslims in Sinjar raped, sold and murdered their own non-muslim neighbours as soon as ISIS strolled into town. They weren't forced, they were greeting them with open arms evident by photos.
I don't like to entertain the notion about whitewashing ISIS as some sort of a sensible "muslim alternative", not that I'm accusing you to suggest that. I'm just noticing that pattern here more and more, some serious high level of naivety of people who've never experienced living in those areas and conditions.
Both Lee Kuan Yew and Pim Fortuyn are gone. Not much hope left.
I don't think I've seen any of this whitewashing you describe. The farthest I've seen anyone go is along the lines of what I've said, that people welcome ISIS not because they're in any way good, but merely because ISIS's order is less bad than the chaos that existed before.
I think this is important to understand, because without that chaos ISIS wouldn't have had this fertile ground in which to grow. If Iraq and Syria hadn't been left to disintegrate, ISIS wouldn't have gone anywhere. Looking at the future, if and when ISIS is destroyed, it's essential to ensure that some form of order is established in these areas, or else we'll just be back at it again in a few more years.
From mainstream outlets I've seen everything from legitimizing ISIS as a(nother) Sunni state (the idea is a Sunni Iraq split is good though) to outright calling them freedom fighters.
GP was saying that stability was probably welcomed.
Even the Syrian Government Army could be welcomed after one spends some time with a different militia taking over a place and collecting taxes and enforcing new rules EVERYDAY.
Even if some of those militias were better than the new stable regime.
The generalization about what Sunni Muslims want is quite gross.
BTW, the word "state" in "Islamic State..." makes it pretty clear: they're offering state functions. Guess how modern nation-states started: killing rivals, providing security and services to populations inside their boders, establishing central cultures...
Of course ISIS needs to be smashed. But note how many nations still celebrate depraved monsters like Christopher Columbus. (Consider that when wondering why people fall for ISIS propaganda. Falling for that kind of propaganda is extremely common; we all do.)
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.
I'm absolutly uninformed on the topic. I'd guess that knowelge of (medivial) arabic is a very high priority among muslims radical enough to join IS. So I assume they use a Mix of English, German and mostly bad arabic.
It takes more than truth to raise a family. Even Budda needed rice. And rich men have always been willing to pay poor men to do their dirty work. Belief is just the pitch.
French lessons are a core part of basic training in the French Foreign Legion, and if you consistently fail to pick up the language you'll probably get kicked out.
That shifts the question to whether new ISIS recruits get lessons in Arabic. I guess kicking recruits out when they don't know Arabic well enough after a certain time is out of the question. Or are they those who get selected for suicide attacks? Okay, that's pretty cynical, I apologize.
Either way, what I find fascinating is that ISIS must be way more complex and sophisticated than is typically portrayed in media. The image that I have is that of barbarians - but in reality, they must have established some level of civil administration - a jihadist bureaucracy. Would love to learn more about this, in case any journalist is reading this.
My understanding is that foreign fighters are regrouped in units sharing the same language, with probably a few of them in each groups acting as interface with the hierarchy.
One of Cracked's writers did a really interesting article about what they learnt from reading ISIS' official magazine[1] which debunks quite a lot of beliefs that the west have picked up about how they think.
ISIS prefers foreign recruits, local recruits often want money, have to go home every year to help the harvest, and aren't willing to follow genocidal orders against their own people. This is all explained in the docs Der Spiegal got a hold of http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-1029274.html
ISIS is primarily made up of ex Saddam Hussein henchmen who know a lot about running a state.
1. ISIS doesn't kick people out, they just kill them.
2. I doubt they'd "downsize" just because some of their recruits don't speak Arabic well. They need and want all the bodies they can get. I'm sure there's enough overlap in language skills for effective communication.
3. They want to present the image of a civil government, but really it's a jihadist bureaucracy based on what most would consider barbarism.
The Foreign Legion trains its recruits to learn French very fast. I saw a documentary on it once - they're not allowed to speak any other language (maybe only during training? I don't remember) and from what I recall, recruits were able to take their training in French in a matter of weeks (i.e., take orders, and understand the material they are taught). Then again, the 'motivation methods' are of a different caliber than those used in the average civilian language course...
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.
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).
Only 1000 from their 15000 foreign fighters are from Turkey, according to the list in Wikipedia. They have more Russian-speaking recruits. I seriously doubt all of them are able to speak Arabic. Some foreigners there speaking English among each other is a very, very likely scenario.
I'm the person you responded to, and I came late to this, but you cannot look at country of origin as a proxy for primary language. Just as most German ISIL fighters speak Turkish, there are similar findings amongst other countries like Russia; although to be fair, I haven't looked into Russia specifically.
I am a German of Turkish (...and Greek ...and Bulgarian) origin. My mother language is German (Fun fact: My mother does not speak German, so, maybe I should also call it my "primary language"). I do speak Turkish but like many Turkish people who have been born in Germany, I can't communicate well in Turkish[1] (and neither in Greek nor Bulgarian). If I were to join an army and communicate under stress (being a pacifist, even the thought gives me the chills though), I'd rather speak German or compromise with English. So, as I said before, I think there is a high chance that they do communicate partially in English. However close-minded they can be, practicality always wins. Always.
[1]: Actually some do speak Turkish somewhat fluently, but I can't tell if being able to describe your favorite cocktail to a bartender in a Turkish hotel proves that you can describe further tactics to fellow combatants under suppressive fire.
>> Their primary problem that ISIL has is that they lack professionals (accountants, engineers, computer scientists).
This.
They're trying to set up an autonomous government and country under Sharia law. One of the main tenets of the Caliphate is the idea of holding sway over territory - without territory there is no Caliphate.
In order to hold territory, they need professionals to support the infrastructure of their Caliphate, otherwise, it falls apart. From all the media reports, it would seem this has been the Achilles heel of the organization from the start:
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?
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).
There have been many studies refuting that. If anything it's the opposite : the poorer/uneducated someone is the less likely they are to become a terrorist, as there are far more poor than rich.
There's been plenty of reporting about the propensity towards terrorism in engineers specifically. Did you have a specific question, or do you just refuse to do your own research?
Even if they all came from Arabic-speaking countries, they would still need to select a common language. Moroccan dialects are not mutually intelligible with Arabian peninsula dialects. So they would have to revert to the older common dialect to communicate.
And that doesn't even take into account people who might speak Albanian, Armenian, French, Farsi, Kurdish, English, Pashto, Balochi, Dari, Tajik, Bengali, Russian, Urdu, or one of the Turkic languages.
Given the public image and media strategy of the group, I guess that Arabic is their common tongue, even if English would be more effective.
I saw a documentary on this not too long ago where they had a guy embedded with ISIS. The explanation was that they'd be broken up into fighting groups by language and there'd be someone there who can speak arabic and the foreign language.
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].
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.
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. ;)
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.
I only doubt this theory because we civilians are not privy to strategic bombing locations. It is entirely possible that the US air campaign (or the Russians', for that matter) recently took out targets key to the financial strength of ISIS.
And French bombings. Yeah I know our forces are ridiculous and it sounds patriotic to request to be named when we participate to a war. But every French home who pays the income tax spent about 800€ to bomb Syria in 2015, out of the 2300€ average of income tax, so please include us ;)
That sounds way off. Way less than 25% of tax revenues go towards the military (more like 2% in Europe). Then the bombing campaign must be a fraction of that.
Income tax total for France was 57B euros. The employer (payroll) tax isn't counted in there. Nor are some of the other social charges. It's a progressive tax designed to keep low-earning households from paying much, if any, income tax.
French ministry of defense is 32b€. You can't move an aircraft carrier without submarines and destroyers, you can't move a fleet without the satellites, you can't do anything without headquarters. We are currently active in 2 wars and present in a lot more places, but without wars, there'd be no need of a big headquartets; so how would you, yourself, make a honest pro rata of the cost of each war?
Yes, it's interesting that Oil exports are mentioned as part of this Iran deal - that has to be an alternative to the Saudis, who very likely are funding IS.
Russians usually target opposition forces such as Al Nusra (AQ affiliate in Syria), FSA et al and hit ISIS sites only when they want to help Assad's militias advance toward Palmyra or any other territory held currently by ISIS.
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.
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.
This makes so much sense that I am afraid it will happen. It's not like the US hasn't gotten in bed with unpopular countries before, and what the government really wants is for the major geopolitical power in the Middle East to be allied with us so we can secure cheap energy.
The FSA and ISIS are two different entities. Both still exist. The third major player is Al Nusra Front, which falls under Al Qaeda. FSA and Al Nusra are fighting ISIS, the Syrian government, and Hezbollah.
In a very interesting interview conducted by Al Jazeera a few months back, the head of Al Nusra Front stated that ISIS and the Syrian government/Hezbollah never really fought each other.
I am sure that at least some area some local commander of either Al Nusra or FSA have joined Isis, for various reasons, like being besieged by Assad's forces, running out of munition, etc.
This is also the messy part of civil war to survive alliances are fleeting. And so it is totally believable that some weapons given by the West to support FSA ended up in Isis hand willingly.
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.
According to this (http://ig.ft.com/sites/2015/isis-oil/) Financial Times article, oil is ISIS' single greatest source of revenue. It is supposed to bring in 1.1 million dollars a day.
A funny thing about the oil transports is that until not so long ago they were sort of a public secret. Because it was Turkey, USA's NATO ally, where most of those transports were going to, but Turkey was of course denying that.
As a sanity check: ISIS soldiers earn between $400 and $1,200 a month, plus a $50 stipend for their wives and $25 for each child, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Call it ~1,000 / month or ~30$ a day. Let's assume 1/3 of that 1 million / day goes to fighters and the rest is overhead. ~= 10,000 fighters which is a significant force and importantly it's replaceable with new recruits.
PS: Though that could significantly understate things if the average is closer to say 500$ per month and / or overhead is lower and paid with other income sources.
This may be a question of direct vs. indirect pay. China and Russia both provide food / shelter / equipment which ISIS may skimp on. Also, ISIS is in a major war relative to there size so hazard pay is an issue.
Anyway poking around the web it looks like they are somewhere between 7,000 and 35,000 fighters which seems to be in the right ballpark for 1Million / day revenue.
Also, yes. But considering that women are marginalized in several of the competing companies as well (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) I don't think it's a differentiating factor.
That's harsh pinkrooftop. I'm not a startup employee or founder, and I read HN because I find the non-startup related submissions interesting. I was deployed at the end of 2012-2013 and my boss called ISIS as a big threat even as it was developing (although he may have just gotten lucky). I wasn't trying to force this into a startup picture, I just saw a lot of parallels between ISIS and a lot of "unicorns" that look awesome and then deflate once reality takes hold and it turns out their business plan is unsustainable. And a lot of startups have an exit strategy to get bought out by a larger tech company. The point I was trying to make is that they can't keep acting like their growth will continue forever and they just realized that they don't have the money to pretend like it will.
If you want to pick apart my comparison, use specific details rather than complaining that the "analogy fails" without offering any support. Sure, startup companies don't kidnap and murder innocent civilians, but I think its a fair comparison when talking about financials and paying employees.
It just doesn't seem worthwhile to fit ISIS into a startup model. It's a terroristic cult focused on Sharia Law. So the business model would be conquer and impose Islamic law, and start a world wide Islamic Caliphate to serve God by means of ushering in the apocalypse, thru innovative disruption of basic human rights? The only similarities to a startup are that they need leadership and money to achieve their goals. Which is what I said before, the analogy fails after the initial idea.
I think that's exactly what it is. It's a shitty business though. It's business is war and conquest and rape and pillage and destruction. But in the end it has a budget, it has a start date, it has employees, it has a stated plan, it recruits, etc... What else do you want in an organization to make it a company?
Using money and budgeting expenditure doesn't alone make something a startup company. Or a company. Paul Graham says a startup is simply a company designed to grow fast. ISIS is trying to grow but are they a company? When do they issue an IPO? What benefit does analyzing ISIS as a startup provide, judging if they are more innovative than other terrorists groups? Can they literally capture enough market share? It's a silly concept, would make a good SNL skit
Your second point. That Isis makes much of its money by taxation. Got any source on that? Taxing the local people sounds like a sure way to lose support. As far as I understand Sunni locals support Isis as their militia.
The reasons may be varied, and perhaps Russia added alot to the mix with their less discriminating bombing...
Add to that better financial tools for tracking and removing illicitly gained moneys from their coffers.
But, really, that's beside the point. The how. The important thing is the what. And that is they are getting financially squeezed.
And their pay scales allow for internal dissent since foreign fighters get paid twice the rate of their locals...
Primarily this was to avoid unnecessary civilian and collateral damage:
"Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks, because of concerns about causing civilian casualties. As a result, the Islamic State’s distribution system for exporting oil had remained largely intact."
Plus why destroy infrastructure required by civilians during peacetime if you don't have to? That just puts them in a worse position when all this is done.
"The USA, great protector of Middle Eastern civilians." Somehow I'm not buying it. The USA does what's good for their bottom line. Everything else is propaganda.
the US only started bombing the oil trucks once their hand was forced by the russians doing so while pointing out that the US had been avoiding these obvious targets. we can speculate on reasons that they held back before then, but i suspect it had to do with the oil being sold to the turks.
The US gave another explanation why they didn't attack oil infrastructure:
> A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/25/michael-more...
Suddenly the US becomes the protector of mother earth?
Close, but I don't think so. The ISIS is supported by the Saudis; as long as they could sell oil, it saved the Saudis money. The Saudis have long opposed air strikes on ISIS. Saudis are using ISIS as proxies in their fight against the new Iraqi government and Syria.
I'm really not sure where the oil-exporting Saudis benefit financially from ISIS undercutting them on the black market. Or indeed where you've got the idea they're opposed to air strikes they've even participated in.
Any tactical enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend inclinations towards supporting ISIS that Saudi might have are are also rather tempered by the fact that wresting control of Mecca from the American-allied kleptocrats of the House of Saud is rather close to the top of the Islamic State's to-do list. Which actually makes them more of a threat than Assad or Iranian-backed Shia militias
The suggestion that Turkey is a sufficiently influential ally for the US to not just disregard but actively encourage cross border black market oil trade with ISIS is almost as silly.
ISIS are Sunnis. Saudis are Sunnis. Iran, Syria are Shia (as are Hezbollah). That's one factor. The other is: some regimes have it in for Assad; they want to get rid of him. They'll support anybody taking on Assad. That's another factor.
Bearing in mind the Saudis launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria themselves a couple of months later, it's not really plausible they want[ed] to protect ISIS as opposed to avoid the US stepping in to stabilise the Iraqi government (or bombing Sunni cities)
ISIS being Sunnis actually makes them more dangerous to the House of Saud, since they represent a challenge to their legitimacy as rulers rather than their population's natural enemy. Similarly, the US damaging the ISIS economy and prestige actually strengthens Saudi Arabia's position as the benefactor-of-choice for aspirant Sunni militants.
I have a friend from the region (Aleppo, to be precise). He claims that Saudi airstrikes actually hit the groups fighting ISIS, and not ISIS. As I haven't followed the news as closely as he does, I'm inclined to take his read on it.
Historically, generals of strong empires tend to go fight rebellions or weaker enemy states for prolonged time even if they could destroy them quickly. They do that to maintain power, or the empire will have no more enemies and the military's influence drops.
I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but that is one of many reasons American entities (military, politicians, whatever) act against some other Americans' interests.
Doesn't the old saw about "never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity" comes to mind instead? American political leadership is desperately incompetent and is obsessed with avoiding bad publicity at all costs. That more than adequately explains our comically ineffectual war strategy.
It seems that way to me. The current administration desperately hope to be able to do nothing and have it resolve itself or do just the bare minimum response to each crisis, but usually underestimate just what that bare minimum response is and have to ramp it up a bit due to political pressure or saving face.
Of course, that attitude is pretty much due to the previous administration being too naively adventurous and stupidly causing big messes that are still causing problems.
And the previous administrations attitude is due to them thinking the problems were caused by the previous previous administration being too weak in their military responses.
The consequence of not destroying this infrastructure is that a vicious and brutal regime has much more resources and has an easier time surviving. By protecting a couple of "civilian" truck drivers -- and if your day job is illegally smuggling oil for a terrorist organization, one must question how much of a "civilian" you really are -- we guarantee that actual civilians in the Islamic State, not to mention civilians in areas attacked by it, will suffer far longer.
> Did the USA realize that they should start bombing oil transports only recently?
Do you want to permanently destroy Iraq's and Syria's ability to create oil?
As long as ISIS wasn't considered a major threat, there was no real reason to bomb the refineries and wells (causing permanent damage to Syria). Now that ISIS is being taken as a more serious threat, the permanent damage to Syria has been deemed acceptable.
"Guys, it was really hilarious when the ISIS came and took lots of land in Iraq and Syria, but then the oil price fell and then they became really scary so now we're bombing their oil-making and oil-moving stuff"
"Guys, at first we thought ISIS wouldn't take root as successfully as they have, so we didn't want to damage Iraqi and Syrian infrastructure (which will then have to be rebuilt). But they did take root, so now we have to suck it up and bomb the infrastructure."
I realize that this may be a possible explanation, but it strikes me as unlikely. The evidence that oil has a special status in US foreign policy are legion, the evidence that other countries' infrastructure has a similar status are substantially less numerous.
Well, if you follow that path to the logical conclusion why not just drop an atom bomb and be done with it?
The thing is ISIS will lose, it's not a question of if but a question of when. Unlike a fairy tale there won't be a happy end afterwards though. These countries will have to be moved back on track and need to become stable. That requires state building which takes time, is expensive and very unpopular with voters.
Additionally these strikes themselves cost lots of money. It also makes sense to avoid civilian casulties to not further support ISIS and other terrorist organizations in their recruitment, which is already going better than anyone would like.
If you think ahead, I don't think you can come to any other choice than to try to minimize damage, especially to important infrastructure like this.
>The evidence that oil has a special status in US foreign policy are legion
Yes and no. Note that the Iraq War was funded by Americans, and that Iraq kept its own oil fields and refineries.
It's unfair to compare the say... Eisenhower administration (1953 Iran revolution, which oil was a big part of) against the Bush administration (2000s Iraq invasion) and assume the policies are the same.
The evidence, as far as I can tell, is that the Bush tried to do the right thing with regards to Iraq's oil. The fallacy of the Bush administration was believing that the Muslim world would love us after we killed the only secular leader in the region. But I don't see any evidence that oil had much to do with the decision.
The 1953 Iran mistake is certainly a mistaken coup with regards to oil.
The 2001 Iraq mistake was one of hubris, a lack of understanding about the Muslim world, and most importantly, piss poor intelligence (WMDs wasn't "Bush's lie", it was the failure of the entire US intelligence community)
That's a great point; it goes both ways though.
No media statement should simply be taken at face value in this type of international conflicts, whether it is RT or the NYT.
Everyone there is getting into trouble with Russian intervention. They are not fighters for the civilisation, they have their intentions and they intervened for those. The problem of middle east is a historical one, and it does not concern only the middle eastern states and people. Since WWI with the fall of the empire, the people started having identity problems, given that until the inception of the twentieth century these people lived under empires, and suddenly then they got their own states, even though there is not and was not such a great cultural divide among these countries, nor a great cultural unity within them. The western state did not work out in the proche-orient, and now we have these problems. Time is the remedy.
With regards to the oil traffic, I do not understand why we, instead of bombing, get a hold of those tankers and use that oil. Oil is precious and finite.
This actually has a pretty straight-forward answer: Russia is not afraid of collateral damage. They will bomb basically anybody, anywhere. The fact is that US/European militaries are acutely cognizant of stepping on anyone's toes. Russia is bombing everything that moves. Watch video of the oil tankers: Those jets dropped 500-pound bombs on checkpoints full of civilians just to get at the tankers. The United States military would not do that.
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..
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.
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.
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 !
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.
In a war torn country, getting a regular paycheck every month is a privilege. They probably get multiple times the average salary in the area.
Another tidbit I heard is that in Afghanistan, many were defecting from the Taleban to Isis because the pay was higher. It seems that in some poor/rural areas, being a fighter is more a career than anything.
They get to rape children. Look at the statistics over rape crimes in Europe and wonder why so many are fleeing back under the notion of "peaceful activism", as Swedish Muslim Organisations called it.
Many of them also know there won't be much evidence of their heinous crimes, so once they come back they will go scotch free as few countries have actually made ISIS illegal (as the SS became).
0. Suspected 300 returned to Sweden according to hospital treatments of war injuries.
1. 120~ actual confirmed ISIS pedophiles returned.
2. 4(?) jailed because they hade photage of themselves raping and murdering.
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?
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.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadHonestly did not expect that. The world is more complex that portrayed.
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.
(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.)
(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.)
except for outside recognition of legitimacy, the line can be thin.
(and it is, since people jump from one to another easily)
This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.
If a government is formed, shadow or not, wouldn't that necessitate removal of the "anarcho" qualifier?
In a similar vein, it seems to me that the term "anarcho-anything state" is logically inconsistent, unless one exclusively uses the "chaos; disorder" definition for "anarcho-" instead of the "without rulers" definition.
It clearly shows the group's violent rhetoric and uncompromising ideology, but also illustrates that ISIS is far more than a war machine. They are trying to create a nation, and that includes civic law enforcement and social services. For many people in the conquered regions, it represents more stability than whatever was there before. Of course, there are many others who are terrorized by ISIS (typically because they do not adhere to the correct brand of religion in the correct way) but it's important to remember that there is a fair-sized contingent of civilians on the ground who welcome ISIS.
I think a lot of these people would prefer a strong, sane national government that isn't at war with everybody and lets people live their lives. But that doesn't seem to be an option, and ISIS is the best they've had recently.
Arab sunni muslims in Sinjar raped, sold and murdered their own non-muslim neighbours as soon as ISIS strolled into town. They weren't forced, they were greeting them with open arms evident by photos.
I don't like to entertain the notion about whitewashing ISIS as some sort of a sensible "muslim alternative", not that I'm accusing you to suggest that. I'm just noticing that pattern here more and more, some serious high level of naivety of people who've never experienced living in those areas and conditions.
Both Lee Kuan Yew and Pim Fortuyn are gone. Not much hope left.
I think this is important to understand, because without that chaos ISIS wouldn't have had this fertile ground in which to grow. If Iraq and Syria hadn't been left to disintegrate, ISIS wouldn't have gone anywhere. Looking at the future, if and when ISIS is destroyed, it's essential to ensure that some form of order is established in these areas, or else we'll just be back at it again in a few more years.
It's increasing...
Even if some of those militias were better than the new stable regime.
The generalization about what Sunni Muslims want is quite gross.
Pretty sure killing/punishing apostates isn't frowned upon in Sunni world. You can dress it up either way you want.
BTW, the word "state" in "Islamic State..." makes it pretty clear: they're offering state functions. Guess how modern nation-states started: killing rivals, providing security and services to populations inside their boders, establishing central cultures...
Of course ISIS needs to be smashed. But note how many nations still celebrate depraved monsters like Christopher Columbus. (Consider that when wondering why people fall for ISIS propaganda. Falling for that kind of propaganda is extremely common; we all do.)
Drug cartels use PR to make people loyal to them. I'd imagine ISIS is doing something relative
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...
(edit: removed superfluous and)
I once witnessed a bunch of fresh recruits tonelessly mumbling through the 'Voila du boudin' as best as they could. It was awesome.
Either way, what I find fascinating is that ISIS must be way more complex and sophisticated than is typically portrayed in media. The image that I have is that of barbarians - but in reality, they must have established some level of civil administration - a jihadist bureaucracy. Would love to learn more about this, in case any journalist is reading this.
[1] http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-...
ISIS is primarily made up of ex Saddam Hussein henchmen who know a lot about running a state.
2. I doubt they'd "downsize" just because some of their recruits don't speak Arabic well. They need and want all the bodies they can get. I'm sure there's enough overlap in language skills for effective communication.
3. They want to present the image of a civil government, but really it's a jihadist bureaucracy based on what most would consider barbarism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_...
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).
[1]: Actually some do speak Turkish somewhat fluently, but I can't tell if being able to describe your favorite cocktail to a bartender in a Turkish hotel proves that you can describe further tactics to fellow combatants under suppressive fire.
This.
They're trying to set up an autonomous government and country under Sharia law. One of the main tenets of the Caliphate is the idea of holding sway over territory - without territory there is no Caliphate.
In order to hold territory, they need professionals to support the infrastructure of their Caliphate, otherwise, it falls apart. From all the media reports, it would seem this has been the Achilles heel of the organization from the start:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-islamic...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/islams-d...
e.g. http://www.economist.com/node/17730424
And that doesn't even take into account people who might speak Albanian, Armenian, French, Farsi, Kurdish, English, Pashto, Balochi, Dari, Tajik, Bengali, Russian, Urdu, or one of the Turkic languages.
Given the public image and media strategy of the group, I guess that Arabic is their common tongue, even if English would be more effective.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flashcontrol/mfidm...
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1231886
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.
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.
Then income tax is 20m homes, avg 2300€ per home.
The person you were replying to specifically stated income tax to highlight their point.
http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/footage-shows-bombi...
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.
It's hard to make an alliance with someone who already funded you.
There are several sides to the Syrian Civil War. The Free Syrian Army is different from ISIS
In a very interesting interview conducted by Al Jazeera a few months back, the head of Al Nusra Front stated that ISIS and the Syrian government/Hezbollah never really fought each other.
This is also the messy part of civil war to survive alliances are fleeting. And so it is totally believable that some weapons given by the West to support FSA ended up in Isis hand willingly.
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html
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.
A funny thing about the oil transports is that until not so long ago they were sort of a public secret. Because it was Turkey, USA's NATO ally, where most of those transports were going to, but Turkey was of course denying that.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/19/oil-prices-fall-further-on-gl...
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-11-clash-of-cl...
Call it ~1,000 / month or ~30$ a day. Let's assume 1/3 of that 1 million / day goes to fighters and the rest is overhead. ~= 10,000 fighters which is a significant force and importantly it's replaceable with new recruits.
PS: Though that could significantly understate things if the average is closer to say 500$ per month and / or overhead is lower and paid with other income sources.
Anyway poking around the web it looks like they are somewhere between 7,000 and 35,000 fighters which seems to be in the right ballpark for 1Million / day revenue.
PS: And of course graft is a major issue.
This doesn't change the overall thrust of your point. Just noting for accuracy only.
Bro culture?
>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
What ?
If you want to pick apart my comparison, use specific details rather than complaining that the "analogy fails" without offering any support. Sure, startup companies don't kidnap and murder innocent civilians, but I think its a fair comparison when talking about financials and paying employees.
Why do you say that?
I think that's exactly what it is. It's a shitty business though. It's business is war and conquest and rape and pillage and destruction. But in the end it has a budget, it has a start date, it has employees, it has a stated plan, it recruits, etc... What else do you want in an organization to make it a company?
If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck...
https://news.vice.com/article/a-leaked-budget-may-finally-sh...
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459249994/leaked-budget-docume...
But, really, that's beside the point. The how. The important thing is the what. And that is they are getting financially squeezed.
And their pay scales allow for internal dissent since foreign fighters get paid twice the rate of their locals...
Good to see them make poor decisions.
Primarily this was to avoid unnecessary civilian and collateral damage:
"Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks, because of concerns about causing civilian casualties. As a result, the Islamic State’s distribution system for exporting oil had remained largely intact."
Plus why destroy infrastructure required by civilians during peacetime if you don't have to? That just puts them in a worse position when all this is done.
> A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/25/michael-more...
Suddenly the US becomes the protector of mother earth?
Any tactical enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend inclinations towards supporting ISIS that Saudi might have are are also rather tempered by the fact that wresting control of Mecca from the American-allied kleptocrats of the House of Saud is rather close to the top of the Islamic State's to-do list. Which actually makes them more of a threat than Assad or Iranian-backed Shia militias
The suggestion that Turkey is a sufficiently influential ally for the US to not just disregard but actively encourage cross border black market oil trade with ISIS is almost as silly.
ISIS are Sunnis. Saudis are Sunnis. Iran, Syria are Shia (as are Hezbollah). That's one factor. The other is: some regimes have it in for Assad; they want to get rid of him. They'll support anybody taking on Assad. That's another factor.
ISIS being Sunnis actually makes them more dangerous to the House of Saud, since they represent a challenge to their legitimacy as rulers rather than their population's natural enemy. Similarly, the US damaging the ISIS economy and prestige actually strengthens Saudi Arabia's position as the benefactor-of-choice for aspirant Sunni militants.
Historically, generals of strong empires tend to go fight rebellions or weaker enemy states for prolonged time even if they could destroy them quickly. They do that to maintain power, or the empire will have no more enemies and the military's influence drops.
I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but that is one of many reasons American entities (military, politicians, whatever) act against some other Americans' interests.
Of course, that attitude is pretty much due to the previous administration being too naively adventurous and stupidly causing big messes that are still causing problems.
And the previous administrations attitude is due to them thinking the problems were caused by the previous previous administration being too weak in their military responses.
etc etc ad infinitum...
Do you want to permanently destroy Iraq's and Syria's ability to create oil?
As long as ISIS wasn't considered a major threat, there was no real reason to bomb the refineries and wells (causing permanent damage to Syria). Now that ISIS is being taken as a more serious threat, the permanent damage to Syria has been deemed acceptable.
So that's how it went down. Did I get that right?
"Guys, at first we thought ISIS wouldn't take root as successfully as they have, so we didn't want to damage Iraqi and Syrian infrastructure (which will then have to be rebuilt). But they did take root, so now we have to suck it up and bomb the infrastructure."
The thing is ISIS will lose, it's not a question of if but a question of when. Unlike a fairy tale there won't be a happy end afterwards though. These countries will have to be moved back on track and need to become stable. That requires state building which takes time, is expensive and very unpopular with voters.
Additionally these strikes themselves cost lots of money. It also makes sense to avoid civilian casulties to not further support ISIS and other terrorist organizations in their recruitment, which is already going better than anyone would like.
If you think ahead, I don't think you can come to any other choice than to try to minimize damage, especially to important infrastructure like this.
Yes and no. Note that the Iraq War was funded by Americans, and that Iraq kept its own oil fields and refineries.
It's unfair to compare the say... Eisenhower administration (1953 Iran revolution, which oil was a big part of) against the Bush administration (2000s Iraq invasion) and assume the policies are the same.
The evidence, as far as I can tell, is that the Bush tried to do the right thing with regards to Iraq's oil. The fallacy of the Bush administration was believing that the Muslim world would love us after we killed the only secular leader in the region. But I don't see any evidence that oil had much to do with the decision.
The 1953 Iran mistake is certainly a mistaken coup with regards to oil.
The 2001 Iraq mistake was one of hubris, a lack of understanding about the Muslim world, and most importantly, piss poor intelligence (WMDs wasn't "Bush's lie", it was the failure of the entire US intelligence community)
The key word is claimed. Like everything Putin's propaganda spews out, it couldn't be farther from the truth.
With regards to the oil traffic, I do not understand why we, instead of bombing, get a hold of those tankers and use that oil. Oil is precious and finite.
This is in firefox btw.
No proof of these leaked docs.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/04/458524627/episo...
"We want revolution! But first we have to cut wages for the revolutionaries. Sorry!"
Another tidbit I heard is that in Afghanistan, many were defecting from the Taleban to Isis because the pay was higher. It seems that in some poor/rural areas, being a fighter is more a career than anything.
Many of them also know there won't be much evidence of their heinous crimes, so once they come back they will go scotch free as few countries have actually made ISIS illegal (as the SS became).
0: http://www.svd.se/granskning-300-svenskar-vardade-for-krigss...(^took this from Reddit)