ISIS’ Ghost Fighters

By Published on December 22, 2015

We are shocked — shocked! — to read that there’s corruption in ISIS. You mean a lot of these murdering thugs are also hypocritical thieves? From the Financial Times:

A year ago Iraq denounced deep corruption within its army, alleging 50,000 “ghost” soldiers had been drawing salaries from the military without serving.

According to Omar, a rebel commander who fought with ISIS for more than a year before fleeing and asked not be identified by his real name, the same thing happened on his side.

“You’d have a frontline [ISIS] commander apply for salaries for 250 people, but really he only has 150,” he said. “When officials discovered the schemes they started sending financial administrators to deliver salaries. Then the administrators started agreeing with commanders on scams, too.”

Corruption is a fact of life in the Middle East, and it appears that not even a heavy dosage of radical jihadism can get rid of it. As the FT documents, corruption in ISIS extends beyond “ghost soldiers” to everything from pharmacies to border patrol to outright theft. (One commander stole $25,000 in taxes and fled.)

 

Read the article “ISIS’ Ghost Fighters” on the-american-interest.com.

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