ISIS Fighters Receive Pay Cut, Get to Keep Martyrdom Benefits

ISIS cuts its fighters' salaries by 50%

The caliphate has indeed been going through a rough patch, losing ground to U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces on its eastern flank, and Russian-backed Syrian regime forces in the west. As ISIS gets much of its funding from the extortion and “taxation” of people in the areas it controls, these setbacks hurt its bottom line. Attacks on ISIS’s oil reserves may also be contributing to the group’s money woes.

Nonetheless, there’s little indication that the flow of fighters from around the world to ISIS has slowed significantly, despite the difficult times and some evidence that it’s become harder for foreign fighters to cross the Turkish border into Syria. A U.S. official told NBC last week that the number of ISIS foreign fighters on the battlefield has increased by 6,000 since this past fall and more than 16,000 in the past year. It seems pretty safe to assume that most of these recruits aren’t in it for the money, so who knows what impact the salary cuts will have.