[WSJ] Fiscal woes couldn’t come at a worse time, as country tries to fend off extremists... sez the Wall Street Journal in an article hidden away behind the pay wall. Without having read the article, we might point out that:
When the WoT started back in 2001 the price of oil was around $40, if I remember correctly. The growth of terrorism was funded by Saudi princes, princelings, holy men, and enthusiastic contributors who were happily cheering for the home team as they killed infidels. Then things reached critical mass as salafism spun off takfir wal hijra, and the kiddie piranhas are the ones eating the parents.
Yemen's disintegrated into a state resembling where it was in 1975, only with takfiri vying for control in Aden while the Zaidis resume the Seat of All Power in Sanaa as Persian puppets.
Qatar owns and operates the Moslem Brüderbund and has simply shifted focus from Egypt to Turkey where the coup has been successful; I think we should start flagging the doings by the Porte and Erdogan Bey as Moslem Brüderbund, which would make Qatar the money behind the Erdogan throne.
Jordan has its own infestation with the Brüderbund forming a power bloc in parliament, and lots of wannabe takfiri running around without that much check, at least not yet. Remember Zarqawi was Jordanian, and al-Maqdisi, his mentor, was sprung by a court recently.
Then there's the Islamic State. Its rise showed that we wasted our time and resources "training" the Iraqi army, which was a corruption-riddled shell made up of ghost units whose pay was going into commanders' pockets, which is about what it was under Saddam only with different commanders. What units they had ran when somebody said "boo." The Syrian army is just as incompetent. They required Hezbollah, which remember is a militia, not a full-time army, and the direct participation of the Medes and the Persians. The same combination is required in Iraq--notice the yellow flags on the Shiite militias, which fully intend biting us and the Kurds in the butt when the IS has been dealt with.
The Kurds, not being Arabs, are the ones who're carrying the freight against the IS. There are problems there, too. The "military wing" of the Kurds is a combination of the PKK (Ocelan's commies, kinda--look for the red star and the hammer and sickle on their flag) and the Peshmerga. There are some pretty intricate politix holding the mix together that I can't really follow anymore for lack of sources. Barzani and his party are in power in Kurdistan, Talabani (who used to be his deadly rival) and his party appear to be the liaison with the Baghdad government. The (Moslem Brüderbund) Turks are trying to undercut the PKK, have Ocelan in jug, and smooth things with their domestic Kurds all at the same time, which means they usually look like they don't know what the hell hey're doing.
Iran, of course, thinks the day of the Achaemenids is back only with turbans. They're actively working toward suzerainty over Iraq, Syria, Leb, Bahrain (at least among the Gulf States) and their finger in Yemen. The last would be the wedge to begin splitting off the Shiite-infested portions of Soddy Arabia, which equate coincidentally to the eastern oil fields if I recall correctly. They expect to do Cyrus the Great type things when the sanctions are lifted, despite the fact that their birthrate's dropping like a stone.
It takes lots of money to have your own army. For IS specifically, if they have a force of 30,000, and each of them gets an AK at an average (according to the most recent TWIG) of $567 apiece, and a turban ($15), face mask ($20), a pair of sneakers ($75) and a Combat Commander Gladiator Sword for cutting heads off ($25) that's $702 to turn out a light infantry fighter without a change of underwear. For 30,000 of them that works out to $21,060,000, which is a fairly hefty cut of the old zakat. Throw in a nifty camo suit for everybody -- they'll run you another fifty bucks apiece, or another $1,500,000 for only one apiece, to be worn until it falls off or the guy detonates. Black shirt and M.C.Hammer pants combos are probably similarly priced.
That's for foot cavalry, too. To transport them you've got to buy a fleet of Toyota pickups, confiscate a bunch of Humvees and 122mm self-propelled artillery pieces and BMPs and such from a fleeing Iraqi army. I don't know what the cash layout required for all that is, but you've got to put gas or diesel fuel in them to move them and you need mechanics to keep them running. If you mount DShKs (called "Dushkas" - Sweeties - from the abbreviation) or similar stylish hardware at $2250 apiece on a fleet of 1000 technicals that adds up to a mere $2,250,000.
Those are just acquisition costs. We haven't computed the gas and oil and maintenance costs. But we can take a crack at computing the cost of paying those 30,000 light infantry gathered from all the uncivilized quarters of the world a minimum of $300 every month: $9,000,000. Then you have to feed the little bearded darlings, which probably works out to around $10 a day or another $300 a month, which brings the beans cost up to $18,000,000 a month, or a bare subsistence cost of $216,000,000 a year.
That's the beans. I have no idea what 12.7mm ammunition costs for the Sweeties, but TWiG sez 7.62mm AK rounds go for .24 apiece, so every time somebody blows off a 30-round clip having gun sex he's shooting of $7.20. One session of gun sex a day for 30,000 Islamic heroes works out to $260,000 ejaculated in some direction or the other. Do that every day for a year and it's $78,840,000.
They do like using Katyushas for artillery support. At $1000 per rocket, a salvo of 24 Grad rocket should work out to about $24,000. I think the 107mm are cheaper than the 122mm, but you get the idea.
Total bare bones beans and bullets works out to $294,840,000, not counting fuel costs and artillery support.
Where's the money come from? Oh, dear. Oil prices are down. That means sell more drugs, run more whorehouses, rob more banks and heist more jewels. And soak Moslems living in the West for more "charity," because it's their religious duty and they have to cheer for the home team.