IS pays recruiters $10,000 per person: UN

IS  PAYS  RECRUITERS  $10,000  PER  PERSON:  UN

Brussels (AFP) - 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.  (One guess from where the monies originate!)

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.

"A significant degree of recruitment currently occurs through friends and family in Syria, who are also paid on the basis of the number of persons they recruit and on whether the recruits subsequently marry," she said.

Karska and Arias said an increasing number of women or girls is leaving Belgium to marry jihadists or care for those who are ill or wounded, but some may actually fight.

They had no figures on how many women had left Belgium, but said the number of boys and men departing for jihad had declined from about 10 per month three years ago to about four or five per month today. Their average age is 23 years old and declining, Karska said.

The working group led a fact-finding visit to Tunisia a few months ago and plans a third trip in March to Ukraine, where the Western-backed government in Kiev is fighting pro-Russian rebels in the east. The final report is due next year.

The Islamic State group's "caliphate" enters its second year with the jihadists expanding their territory in Syria and Iraq, and their global reach, by claiming attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait. 

The extremist group headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced on June 29, 2014 that it was reviving a form of Islamic government known as the "caliphate", pledging it would "remain and expand".

In the year since, the group has gained more territory in Syria and Iraq despite an attempted fightback supported by a US-led coalition air campaign.

It has also attracted a string of affiliates -- in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere -- and sought to project fear on an international scale. (AFP)

In this photo released on May 4, 2015, by a militant website, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, Islamic State militants pass by a convoy in Tel Abyad town, northeast Syria. In contrast to the failures of the Iraqi army, in Syria Kurdish fighters are on the march against the Islamic State group, capturing towns and villages in an oil-rich swath of the country's northeast in recent days, under the cover of U.S.-led airstrikes.

This picture released on July 13, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Islamic State militants, shows an Islamic State militant sniper in position during a battle against Syrian government forces in Deir el-Zour province, Syria. When world leaders convene for the U.N. General Assembly debate Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, it will be a year since the U.S. president declared the formation of an international coalition to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State group. Despite billions of dollars spent and thousands of airstrikes, the campaign appears to have made little impact.

In this photo released on May 14, 2015 by a militant website, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, a member of the Islamic State group's vice police known as "Hisba," right, reads a verdict handed down by an Islamic court sentencing many they accused of adultery to lashing, in Raqqa City, Syria.

In this undated photo, released Aug. 25, 2015 on a social media site used by Islamic State militants, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows smoke from the detonation of the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin in Syria's ancient caravan city of Palmyra. (Islamic State social media account

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