Where does the Islamic State get all its money? From black market sales of oil, and from well-heeled donors worldwide who agree with its views of Islam.
“Islamic State Pays Recruiters $10,000 Per Person: UN,” Agence France-Presse, October 17, 2015:
Brussels: The Islamic State group is paying supporters up to $10,000 for each person that they recruit to wage jihad in Syria and Iraq, UN experts said Friday after a visit to Belgium, one of the main countries of origin for so-called foreign fighters.
Elzbieta Karska, who chairs a UN group studying the issue, said IS is using social media and informal networks of friends and family, with many of them in Syria, to recruit new jihadists in Belgium.
The UN experts learned from Belgian contacts that 500 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria originated in Belgium, the highest per capita of any EU country, she added.
“We have heard… about situations where recruiters were paid from two, three thousand to 10,000 dollars depending on… who was recruited,” Karska told a press conference in Brussels, adding the findings were preliminary.
“If somebody was well educated like computer specialists or doctors, they were paid more,” the Polish human rights lawyer added.
Her colleague Patricia Arias, a Chilean lawyer, added “they are paid by Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The Belgian-based extremist group Sharia4Belgium enlisted the first wave of recruits for Syria in 2010, according to Karska’s UN body, which was set up by the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights.
With Sharia4Belgium now broken up and many of its members jailed, recruiting has changed.
In the last year, “the key method of recruitment is reportedly through informal networks of friends and family, and through social media,” Karska said….