Who Created Isis?

Crucially as far as the major powers are concerned, ISIS has captured much of the region’s strategic oil industry. It is also seizing large amounts of US weaponry abandoned in the country after the withdrawal from Iraq three years ago, including 1,500 Humvees, 4,000 PKC machineguns, and 52 M198 155-millimeter howitzers. This heavy artillery gives them the capability to bombard Iraqi cities, including potentially Baghdad, threatening Western commercial interests.

The fact remains, however, that the US, the major European powers, and their regional allies all previously lent financial, military and political support to ISIS and similar groups, which have “Made in the USA” stamped all over them. They have, until now, played a significant part in Washington’s efforts to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as part of a broader effort to gain control of the region’s vast energy resources and transit routes.

ISIS is distinguished by its religious fanaticism, commitment to capitalism, and virulent anti-communism. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan and similar groups in Somalia, Nigeria and elsewhere, it uses terror to put pressure on the imperialist powers and force them to make some accommodation with it as a regional power centre.

ISIS is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, the terrorist Islamic group previously headed by Osama bin Laden, the son of the wealthy owner of a construction company with close links to the House of Saud. Al Qaeda was formed in the late 1980s in Afghanistan with support from the CIA, which backed the mujahedin as part of its covert war that began in 1979 against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.

Over a ten-year period, the US gave the mujahedin around $5 billion in weaponry and aid to recruit and train local forces. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan promoted the mujahedin, encouraging volunteers from the Arab and Islamic countries, such as bin Laden.

Al Qaeda was by no means the only Islamic fundamentalist group supported by Washington and its allies in a struggle for geopolitical influence against regimes and movements allied to Russia. Israel fostered Hamas, the offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as a counterweight to Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation.

ISIS, formed in 2004, later incorporated a number of Sunni insurgent factions in Iraq. It was responsible for three terrorist bombings of hotels in Amman, Jordan in 2005, but remained a small group until the demonstrations that began in Dera’a in southern Syria in March 2011.

The Western powers, flush with success after organising an Islamist insurgency in Benghazi in order to justify NATO’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, thought they could use similar forces to overthrow Assad in Syria, whose regime draws its main base of support from the Alawite sect, a Shi’a offshoot, and Sunni businessmen.

For three years, the US, along with the Gulf states and Turkey, poured billions into “opposition” groups, supposedly to unnamed “moderates,” but in reality to Al Qaeda-linked Sunni groups such as al-Nusra and ISIS to spearhead a sectarian war. The US, Turkey and Jordan have operated a base in Jordan where US instructors trained dozens of ISIS members. In an article last year, the New York Times confirmed that the CIA assisted Arab governments and Turkey by airlifting weaponry to these groups in Jordan and Turkey. The Guardian reported last March that British and French instructors were also involved.

Other ISIS members were trained near Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey, where US forces are based. After completing their training, they went to Syria and later Iraq. Following the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, the CIA used the US consulate in Benghazi as a transit base for weaponry, Islamist fighters and cash to Syria, until it was attacked on September 11, 2012 by Islamist militias in a “blowback” operation that killed the US ambassador and three consular staffers.

As opposition grew to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-dominated government, installed by Washington, which has launched a reign of terror against Iraq’s minority Sunni population, the US and Saudi-sponsored civil war in Syria spilled over into Iraq.

ISIS’s seemingly rapid advance must have been well prepared by its allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Israel carries out constant surveillance of Syria from the Golan Heights, from where it has launched attacks on Syria, and provided intelligence information and a field hospital for the “rebels.” Israeli figures, including former Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren and Amos Gilad, director of the Defence Ministry’s policy and political-military relations department, have spoken openly of Tel Aviv’s working relations with the Saudis.

A Texas plumber whose company pickup truck, complete with logo and contact information, appeared in a photograph with jihadists in Syria has sued the dealer who purchased his vehicle, saying the photo has hurt his business and drawn death threats.

And while NATO-member Turkey supplying ISIS with funding, supplies, weapons or equipment is hardly groundbreaking news, the Ford "clue" poses new and important questions, such as:

• who is the Turkish party that ordered and paid for the Ford truck's transfer to Turkey, and subsequently received compensation from the Islamic State in the subsequent resale?
• which is the US party which transacts with Turkish counterparts, who ultimately ship US products to Islamic State fighters?
• is the US party aware that its Turkish counterparty has dealings with ISIS
• what is the role of the US government in all of this, because it would be surprising that an administration that has sworn it would crack down on all outside assistance to the Islamic State would be unaware that "made in the USA" trucks ended up in the Islamic State by way of its faitful NATO ally, Turkey.
• how many other such vehicles sold  in the US and exported to Turkey, have  made their way to the Islamic State