It may come as a surprise that ISIL publishes glossy annual reports, but now even terror must speak in the universal language of business.
So what kind of business organisation is ISIL? How does its organisational structure motivate its barely post-adolescent workforce? And, crucially, for those battling it, can it now adapt to a changing environment?
Psychologist Karl Weick noted that organisations exist mostly in our relationships and in our heads. This is where organisational inertia comes from.
By looking closely at how individuals and groups relate to each other within organisations, research in business psychology has revealed a small number of basic organisational designs beneath the surface of most groups. ISIL may be a hybrid of two of these designs, described by organisational psychologist Henry Mintzberg as the machine form and the innovative form.
The “machine” form is characterised by formal relationships, hierarchy and lots of direct supervision of subordinates. A typical call centre, or an assembly line, for example. The commanders of ISIL like to do things the machine way, too. But a range of factors – such as constant air strikes – inhibit direct supervision of a dispersed workforce of fighters. Left to their own devices, the fighters tend to adopt Mintzberg’s “innovative” organisational design, in which hierarchy is much less evident, and improvised day-to-day collaborations enable them to adapt more readily in a volatile environment.
Typically, the organisational culture is the glue that holds an innovative form together. The fighters’ culture encompasses a distinctive style of brutality that confirms their alignment with the commanding elites. But it’s also a youth culture.
This is where ISIL’s social media propaganda came from. Not a sophisticated social media offensive orchestrated by the high command. No. It’s just that kids tweet to kids, and post on Facebook and Vimeo, and do online gaming. In 2010, Humera Khan set up Muflehun, which tracks online extremism. She has found that these posts are most likely to be picked up, in the West, by impressionable youngsters with the least religious backgrounds. It’s the engagement and identity that gets them. Real life Call of Duty, with benefits.
The fighters tweet on despite high fatality rates. Yet they are what organisational psychologist Oliver Williamson calls “additive”; dispensable and replaceable, like casual labour, and not normally associated with a culture of engagement and enthusiasm. So how does an organisation motivate the “additives” when high wages are not an option?
Williamson, a 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics (there isn’t a Nobel Prize for psychology), identified three other occupational categories that he believes provide the basic templates for all occupations. There are those who come and go, being paid for specific services. Then there are the “idiosyncratic” types; no one knows quite what they do but they know they couldn’t do without them. The third category is the start-up team: relational, indispensable, highly motivated and maybe resembling a micro version of Mintzberg’s innovative design. Williamson calls this the “relational team”. The trick, of course, is to make the additives feel like they are the relational team. In ISIL’s case, circumstances conspired to create an innovative form in which there should have been only the bottom layer of a machine hierarchy. And the energy of youthful engagement is contagious.
ISIL grew out of local conflicts and stumbled on global resonance online.
The machine of the ISIL command structure may falter as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq move into their next tragic phases, but thanks to the new magic of the online marketplace, the chances are that the dark culture of empowerment through atrocity will be propagated by virtual communities for some time to come. A new and psychological battleground has emerged.
Greg Fantham is assistant professor of psychology at Heriot-Watt University Dubai
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
