ISIS Kidnapping of Children is a Business
When I started in the pre-paid phonecard business 21 years ago we barely sold $50,000 worth in our first year. We (my partners and I) had to invest our personal monies to increase it to $250,000 in sales for our second year and even more monies to rake in $500,000 in our third year and $5 million in our 4th year. By reinvesting all our profits for the next few years, by our 10th year we were grossing in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Many businesses, with proper funding and the assiduous re-investing of profits, can become quite large.
ISIS had great initial funding (1) and now is able to raise its own funds through kidnapping, oil smuggling, selling women into slavery, etc. and so can afford to attract tens of thousands of jihadists from all over the world. Presently it has a few thousand girls available for ransom at a few grand apiece. If all these girls are successfully 'redeemed' ISIS will be able to use the few million dollars raised to feed and attract even more jihadists so that they can kidnap tens of thousands of girls and raise even more money. For the sake of the future tens of thousands of girls it is imperative we do not help ISIS turn this into a multi-billion dollar business.
In my article How To Legally Donate Money to ISIS, I urged my readers not to donate any money to organizations who want to ransom these girls. In response, reader Kirsten Simons asked me, "So what are you doing to rescue these girls and women instead?"
It's too late for these girls. Kirsten might as well ask me what I am doing for the hundreds of millions starving in Africa. I am not giving money to aid Africa. People who helped Africa 30 years ago to help tens of millions who were starving are responsible for hundreds of millions starving now. They only made it worse. The 'right thing to do' 30 years ago was to do nothing, see my article For Gods Sake - Stop Helping Africa.
Dear innocent, sweet Kirsten, if I help raise money for ransom now, a year or two from now there will be 20,000 girls held by ISIS and I will ask you, "Why the f*ck did I listen to you?" What will you say then, when you realize that you facilitated even more girls being kidnapped? Honestly, please, what will you say, "Ooops?"
The French have a word for people like Kirsten: "idiots utiles."
ENDNOTES
(1):
NBC News, 21 Sep 2014, Who's Funding ISIS? Wealthy Gulf 'Angel Investors,' Officials Say
ISIL militants driving in vehicles near the central Iraqi city of Tikrit
A small but steady flow of money to ISIS from rich individuals in the Gulf continues, say current and former U.S. officials, with Qataris the biggest suppliers. These rich individuals have long served as "angel investors," as one expert put it, for the most violent militants in the region, providing the “seed money” that helped launch ISIS and other jihadi groups.
...
"These rich Arabs are like what 'angel investors' are to tech start-ups, except they are interested in starting up groups who want to stir up hatred," said Stavridis, now the dean of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. "Groups like al-Nusrah and ISIS are better investments for them. The individuals act as high rollers early, providing seed money. Once the groups are on their feet, they are perfectly capable of raising funds through other means, like kidnapping, oil smuggling, selling women into slavery, etc."
