Motivated by a desire to show solidarity with fellow Muslims abroad, perceived alienation and social exclusion felt in home country, as well as the desire to conduct jihad, foreign terrorist fighters or FTF’s hope to benefit financially from Hijra is dampened by measly earnings and barren solitude. S.I reviewed data and literature around what jihadists earn and found out the following.
- FTFs or foreign terrorist’s fighters, today are mostly young men between the ages of eighteen and mid -to-late twenties (in both ISIS and Al-Shabaab). ISIS Jihadist fighters in Syria and Iraqi get a base salary of $50 monthly plus basic food and accommodation. The amount is ridiculously small if you’re single.
- In Somalia, Hiraal Institute, a think tank, found out that the Al-Qaeda branch, Harakat Shabaab Mujahideen pays its fighters a measly $30 a month. That’s not even ridiculously few rather outrageously small, and that’s exactly the size of the brain of the fighters, ‘just too small’. Shabaab Mujahideen terrorists’ supports kleptocratic policy to psychologically enslave the fighters though it encourages a fighter to loot and pillage to gain compensation besides gather up the goods and wealth that is left behind.
- S.I found out that these ridiculously small salaries are motivating foreign terrorist fighters to return home. We also found out that due to their tender age, the FTF’s use high dimension communication networks (HDCN) to maintain contact with their family network. It is the family network, particularly mothers and sisters, that exert the most influential pressure on FTFs to return home, though only once their disillusionment and disappointment has begun to kick in.
- S.I found out that many FTFs serving as foot soldiers lack opportunity, are disadvantaged economically, lack education and have poor labor prospects, even when they come from Western societies. There is also a particular concern that individuals traveling to war-zones like Syria and Somalia may become further radicalized while there, and may receive combat training, extremist indoctrination and ‘develop intense social associations, generating friendship networks and perceived mutual loyalties that could be the basis of autonomous, transnational terrorist cells in the future just for the measly $30 a month.
