After the Syrian government stopped paying him, a technician who had spent two decades pumping the country’s oil received an enticing offer: do the same work for the jihadists of the Islamic State — starting at three times the salary. He was soon helping to fill tanker trucks with crude oil to fund the Islamic State. But frequent executions of those suspected of spying and deadly airstrikes by government jets made life hard, and he grew angry that the country’s resources were financing the jihadists while schools and hospitals were being shut down. “We thought they wanted to get rid of the regime, but they turned out to be thieves,” the technician said after fleeing […]