ISIS: Made in Washington?
As a result of its continuing offensives in Iraq, the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIS) has become the latest Islamist threat to civilisation. If the rightwing Internet website World Net Daily is to be believed however, the US government may have inadvertently played a direct role in ISIS’s creation, through a military training program which began in the spring of 2012.
According to WND, ‘dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.‘
Evidence to support this thesis comes from ‘ informed Jordanian officials’ and is rather thin on the details. WND does not say, for example, how US military trainers knew that they were training ISIS, given that the group has only emerged as a military force in Syria in the last 12 months. Its reporters also quote ‘a high official in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’ who says that the US was aware of more recent training and support provided to ISIS by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
These are hardly reliable or conclusive sources, especially coming from a conservative website which undoubtedly has more interest in advancing conspiracy theories involving the Obama administration than it might have done say, if George Bush had still been in power. Nevertheless, it is not outlandish to suggest that Isis may be – in part – yet another of the unexpected consequences or ‘blowback’ of the clandestine backchannels through which US/ Western strategic interests are pursued. From the earliest period of the rebellion against Assad, the Syrian opposition was receiving money, weapons and training from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf States.
