Doing it for the Money

Washington Post Article

What I learned from this article was that an increasing amount of insurgents have joined because of money as opposed to cause. I thought this was interesting because the typical portrayal of the Iraqi insurgent is an American hating extremist. While the insurgents who joined for the money might hate Americans, that was not the reason they joined. In fact Abu Nawall, a captured insurgent who joined for the money because he lost his job as a metal worker, was payed $1,300 a month as an insurgent.

On the other hand, how are the insurgent groups paying their recruits? A growing number have turned to gangster style racketeering. A racket is illegal business, the most well known form of racket is where the criminals demand payment from businesses for protection from crimes which, if unpaid, the criminals perform. The groups are also getting a large amount of their revenue from ransoms, according to Nawall, "ransoms can reach $50,000 a person."

The United states have in turn launched a propaganda effort describing Nawall and other insurgents as greedy to create internal fighting among insurgent groups as well as undermining the support for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. has also been attempting to disrupt the Sunni funding network, capturing lower level members has not been successful so they have turned to shutting down money transferring operations, mainly in Mosul. Mosul is the where most of the insurgent's money is being wired into from Syria and other countries. The challenge is to eliminate the racketeering operations of al-Qaeda, without eliminating the legitimate business Iraq desperately needs.

Questions I had:
Why do the insurgents hate Americans?
What does al-Qaeda stand for and what are its ideals?
Why does Syria support the insurgents?
What percentage of insurgents have joined just for the money?