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Comment by beambot | Hacker News Reader

The French Foreign Legion manages to get by with lots of soldiers from different backgrounds and languages... so it's not without precedence.

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The Foreign Legion trains its recruits to learn French very fast. I saw a documentary on it once - they're not allowed to speak any other language (maybe only during training? I don't remember) and from what I recall, recruits were able to take their training in French in a matter of weeks (i.e., take orders, and understand the material they are taught). Then again, the 'motivation methods' are of a different caliber than those used in the average civilian language course...

French lessons are a core part of basic training in the French Foreign Legion, and if you consistently fail to pick up the language you'll probably get kicked out.

They also get to sing in French about blood sausage, and how the lazy Belgians won't get any. It's their marching song.

I once witnessed a bunch of fresh recruits tonelessly mumbling through the 'Voila du boudin' as best as they could. It was awesome.

That shifts the question to whether new ISIS recruits get lessons in Arabic. I guess kicking recruits out when they don't know Arabic well enough after a certain time is out of the question. Or are they those who get selected for suicide attacks? Okay, that's pretty cynical, I apologize.

Either way, what I find fascinating is that ISIS must be way more complex and sophisticated than is typically portrayed in media. The image that I have is that of barbarians - but in reality, they must have established some level of civil administration - a jihadist bureaucracy. Would love to learn more about this, in case any journalist is reading this.

One of Cracked's writers did a really interesting article about what they learnt from reading ISIS' official magazine[1] which debunks quite a lot of beliefs that the west have picked up about how they think.

[1] http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-...

That article was really good. I thought Cracked was basically CollegeHumor or something. Never would have expected that article.

ISIS prefers foreign recruits, local recruits often want money, have to go home every year to help the harvest, and aren't willing to follow genocidal orders against their own people. This is all explained in the docs Der Spiegal got a hold of http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-1029274.html

ISIS is primarily made up of ex Saddam Hussein henchmen who know a lot about running a state.

My understanding is that foreign fighters are regrouped in units sharing the same language, with probably a few of them in each groups acting as interface with the hierarchy.

1. ISIS doesn't kick people out, they just kill them.

2. I doubt they'd "downsize" just because some of their recruits don't speak Arabic well. They need and want all the bodies they can get. I'm sure there's enough overlap in language skills for effective communication.

3. They want to present the image of a civil government, but really it's a jihadist bureaucracy based on what most would consider barbarism.

That was pretty much all tongue-in-cheek. I guess I have to ramp up on the sarcasm.

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