"ISIL's decision to reduce the salaries of its foreign militants by half has immensely impacted them so much that some of them have left the terrorist group," the news agency reports.
These desertions apparently confirm that the Daesh militants are mostly motivated by greed and not by religious fervor, Alsumaria remarks.
Earlier the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported resentment among Syrian Daesh fighters, who believed their pay was being cut to raise the wages of Arab and foreign fighters. However, according a leaked Daesh document, a pay cut has in fact been imposed on all of the movement’s rank and file fighters.
The pay cut was apparently authorized by the so-called 'treasury' of Daesh due to 'exceptional circumstances' as the terrorist movement has apparently begun to feel the strain of being engaged in protracted fighting on multiple battlefronts.
