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Despair, hardship as Iraq cuts off wages in Islamic State cities

The Iraqi government's decision to choke off funding for Islamic State by cutting off all wages and pensions in cities controlled by the group has plunged people into hardship and could help the insurgents tighten their grip, officials and residents say. For a year after Islamic State fighters swept through a third of Iraq, Baghdad continued […]

Isabel Coles reports for Reuters:

The Iraqi government's decision to choke off funding for Islamic State by cutting off all wages and pensions in cities controlled by the group has plunged people into hardship and could help the insurgents tighten their grip, officials and residents say. For a year after Islamic State fighters swept through a third of Iraq, Baghdad continued to pay pensions and salaries of state employees inside the self-proclaimed caliphate.

But since July all such payments have been halted, depriving whole cities' pensioners, civil servants, doctors, teachers, nurses, police and workers at state-owned companies of both their income and some of their last official links to Baghdad. The move is meant to cut Islamic State militants off from of an income stream they have been skimming to fund their efforts to build a self-sustaining state in Iraq and Syria.