[News] How the west created the Islamic State…with a little help from our friends

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*How the west created the Islamic State**…with a little help from our 
friends

**https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f**
*


      Part 1 – OUR TERRORISTS

    “This is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days
    strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated,” /Gen
    Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a
    Pentagon press conference in August./

Military action is necessary to halt the spread of the ISIS/IS “cancer,” 
said President Obama. Yesterday, in his much anticipated address, he 
called for expanded airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, and new measures 
to arm and train Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces.

    “The only way to defeat [IS] is to stand firm and to send a very
    straightforward message,”/declared Prime Minister Cameron./ “A
    country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers.”

Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any 
acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional 
military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly 
sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and 
beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the 
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS).

Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated 
direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to 
al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived 
patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of 
neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often 
contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an 
expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the 
Middle East.

Now despite Pentagon denials that there will be boots on the ground – 
and Obama’s insistence that this would not be another “Iraq war” – local 
Kurdish military and intelligence sources confirm that US and German 
special operations forces 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/02/are-american-troops-already-fighting-on-the-front-lines-in-iraq.html> 
are already “on the ground here. They are helping to support us in the 
attack.” US airstrikes on ISIS positions and arms supplies to the Kurds 
have also been accompanied by British RAF reconnaissance flights over 
the region and UK weapons shipments 
<http://news.yahoo.com/britain-arming-iraqi-kurds-machine-guns-fight-140021897.html> 
to Kurdish peshmerga forces.


        *Divide and rule in Iraq*

    “It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs,” /said one
    //US government defense consultant/
    <http://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version/>/in 2007./
    “It’s who they throw them at – Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and
    at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

Early during the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US covertly 
supplied arms to al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents even while ostensibly 
supporting an emerging Shi’a-dominated administration.

Pakistani defense sources interviewed by Asia Times 
<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html> in February 
2005 confirmed that insurgents described as “former Ba’ath party” 
loyalists – who were being recruited and trained 
<http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CAUGHT_RED__0923.html> by “al-Qaeda in 
Iraq” under the leadership of the late Abu Musab Zarqawi – were being 
supplied Pakistan-manufactured weapons by the US. The arms shipments 
included rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets 
and other light weaponry. These arms “could not be destined for the 
Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them”, a source 
told Syed Saleem Shahzad – the Times’ Pakistan bureau chief who, “known 
for his exposes of the Pakistani military 
<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/19/the-journalist-and-the-spies>” 
according to the New Yorker, was murdered in 2011. Rather, the US is 
playing a double-game to “head off” the threat of a “Shi’ite 
clergy-driven religious movement,” said the Pakistani defense source.

This was not the only way US strategy aided the rise of Zarqawi, a bin 
Laden mentee and brainchild of the extremist ideology that would later 
spawn ‘ISIS.’

According to a little-known November report for the US Joint Special 
Operations University 
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2005/0511_jsou-report-05-5.pdf> 
(JSOU) and Strategic Studies Department, /Dividing Our Enemies/, 
post-invasion Iraq was “an interesting case study of fanning discontent 
among enemies, leading to ‘red-against-red’ [enemy-against-enemy] 
firefights.”

While counterinsurgency on the one hand requires US forces to 
“ameliorate harsh or deprived living conditions of the indigenous 
populations” to publicly win local hearts and minds:

    “… the reverse side of this coin is one less discussed. *It involves
    no effort to win over those caught in the crossfire of insurgent and
    counterinsurgent warfare, whether by bullet or broadcast*. On the
    contrary, this underside of the counterinsurgency coin is calculated
    to *exploit or create divisions among adversaries* for the purpose
    of fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters.”

In other words, US forces will pursue public legitimacy through 
conventional social welfare while simultaneously delegitimising local 
enemies by escalating intra-insurgent violence, knowing full-well that 
doing so will in turn escalate the number of innocent civilians “caught 
in the crossfire.” The idea is that violence covertly calibrated by US 
special operations 
<http://themester.indiana.edu/themester2011/events/ahmed.pdf> will not 
only weaken enemies through in-fighting but turn the population against 
them.

In this case, the ‘enemy’ consisted of jihadists, Ba’athists, and 
peaceful Sufis, who were in a majority but, like the militants, also 
opposed the US military presence and therefore needed to be influenced. 
The JSOU report referred to events in late 2004 in Fallujah where “US 
psychological warfare (PSYOP) specialists” undertook to “set insurgents 
battling insurgents.” This involved actually promoting Zarqawi’s 
ideology, ironically, to defeat it: “The PSYOP warriors crafted programs 
to exploit Zarqawi’s murderous activities – and to disseminate them 
through meetings, radio and television broadcasts, handouts, newspaper 
stories, political cartoons, and posters – thereby diminishing his 
folk-hero image,” and encouraging the different factions to pick each 
other off. “By tapping into the Fallujans’ revulsion and antagonism to 
the Zarqawi jihadis the Joint PSYOP Task Force did its ‘best to foster a 
rift between Sunni groups.’”

Yet as noted by Dahr Jamail, one of the few unembedded investigative 
reporters in Iraq after the war, the proliferation of propaganda linking 
the acceleration of suicide bombings to the persona of Zarqawi was not 
matched by meaningful evidence. His own search to substantiate the 
myriad claims attributing the insurgency to Zarqawi beyond anonymous US 
intelligence sources encountered only an “eerie blankness 
<http://thefallujahproject.org/home/node/69>”.

The US military operation in Fallujah, largely justified on the claim 
that Zarqawi’s militant forces had occupied the city, used white 
phosphorous, cluster bombs, and indiscriminate air strikes to pulverise 
36,000 of Fallujah’s 50,000 homes, killing nearly a thousand civilians, 
terrorising 300,000 inhabitants to flee, and culminating in a 
disproportionate increase in birth defects, cancer and infant mortality 
due to the devastating environmental consequences of the war.

To this day, Fallujah has suffered from being largely cut-off from wider 
Iraq, its infrastructure largely unworkable with water and sewage 
systems still in disrepair, and its citizens subject to sectarian 
discrimination and persecution by Iraqi government backed Shi’a militia 
and police. “Thousands of bereaved and homeless Falluja families have a 
new reason to hate the US and its allies,” observed The Guardian 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/27/iraq.iraq5> in 2005. Thus, 
did the US occupation plant the seeds 
<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/isis-a-short-history/376030/> 
from which Zarqawi’s legacy would coalesce into the Frankenstein monster 
that calls itself “the Islamic State.”


        *Bankrolling al-Qaeda in Syria*

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeyRwFHR8WY>, Britain had planned covert 
action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the 
violence in Syria on other business,” he told French television: “I met 
with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing 
something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was 
preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor 
<http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/syria-spooks-wikileaks-military/5502>, 
including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials 
<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/1671459_insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html>, 
confirmed that as of 2011, US and UK special forces training of Syrian 
opposition forces was well underway. The goal was to elicit the 
“collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Since then, the role of the Gulf states 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html> 
– namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and 
Jordan (as well as NATO member Turkey) – in officially and unofficially 
financing <https://medium.com/p/dbfa6f83bc1f/financing> and coordinating 
the most virulent elements 
<http://www.dw.de/who-finances-isis/a-17720149> amongst Syria’s rebels 
under the tutelage of US military intelligence is no secret. Yet the 
conventional wisdom is that the funneling of support to Islamist 
extremists in the rebel movement affiliated to al-Qaeda has been a 
colossal and regrettable error.

The reality is very different. The empowerment of the Islamist factions 
within the ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA) was a foregone conclusion of the 
strategy.

In its drive to depose Col. Qaddafi in Libya, NATO had previously allied 
itself with rebels affiliated to the al-Qaeda faction, the Islamic 
Fighting Group. The resulting Libyan regime backed by the US was in turn 
liaising with FSA leaders 
<http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-heavy-weapons-jihadists-2012-10> in 
Istanbul to provide money and heavy weapons for the anti-Assad 
insurgency. The State Department even hired an al-Qaeda affiliated 
Libyan militia group to provide security 
<http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/benghazi-consulate-protected-alqaida/2013/05/02/id/502565/> 
for the US embassy in Benghazi – although they had links with the very 
people that attacked the embassy.

Last year, CNN confirmed that CIA officials operating secretly out of 
the Benghazi embassy were being forced to take extra polygraph tests 
<http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/exclusive-dozens-of-cia-operatives-on-the-ground-during-benghazi-attack/?hpt=hp_t4> 
to keep under wraps what US Congressman suspect was a covert operation 
“to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into 
the hands of Syrian rebels.”

With their command and control centre 
<http://world.time.com/2012/09/18/syrias-secular-and-islamist-rebels-who-are-the-saudis-and-the-qataris-arming/> 
based in Istanbul, Turkey, military supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar 
in particular were transported by Turkish intelligence to the border for 
rebel acquisition. CIA operatives along with Israeli and Jordanian 
commandos 
<http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Syrian-rebel-forces-trained-by-West-are-moving-towards-Damascus-324033> 
were also training FSA rebels on the Jordanian-Syrian border with 
anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. In addition, other reports 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-training-syrian-rebels-jordan> 
show that British and French military were also involved in these secret 
training programmes. It appears that the same FSA rebels receiving this 
elite training went straight into ISIS – last month one ISIS commander, 
Abu Yusaf 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/18/the-terrorists-fighting-us-now-we-just-finished-training-them/>, 
said, “Many of the FSA people who the west has trained are actually 
joining us.”

The National 
<http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/syrian-rebels-get-arms-and-advice-through-secret-command-centre-in-amman#full> 
thus confirmed the existence of another command and control centre in 
Amman, Jordan, “staffed by western and Arab military officials,” which 
“channels vehicles, sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, small 
arms and ammunition to Free Syrian Army units.” Rebel and opposition 
sources described the weapons bridge as “a well-run operation staffed by 
high-ranking military officials from 14 countries, including the US, 
European nations and Arabian Gulf states, the latter providing the bulk 
of materiel and financial support to rebel factions.”

The FSA sources interviewed by The National went to pains to deny that 
any al-Qaeda affiliated factions were involved in the control centre, or 
would receive any weapons support. But this is difficult to believe 
given that “Saudi and Qatari-supplied weapons” were being funneled 
through to the rebels via Amman, to their favoured factions.

Classified assessments 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> 
of the military assistance supplied by US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar 
obtained by the New York Times showed that “most of the arms shipped at 
the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups… are 
going to hardline Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition 
groups that the West wants to bolster.”

Lest there be any doubt as to the extent to which all this covert 
military assistance coordinated by the US has gone to support al-Qaeda 
affiliated factions in the FSA, it is worth noting that earlier this 
year, the Israeli military intelligence website Debkafile 
<http://www.debka.com/article/23808/Syrian-rebels-allowed-to-attack-Latakia-from-Turkish-soil-under-Turkish-air-cover-Iran-raises-Cain-in-Ankara> 
– run by two veteran correspondents who covered the Middle East for 23 
years for The Economist – reported that: “Turkey is giving Syrian rebel 
forces, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, passage through 
its territory to attack the northwestern Syrian coastal area around 
Latakia.”

In August, Debkafile 
<http://www.debka.com/article/24223/Israeli-forces-caught-up-in-Al-Qaeda%E2%80%99s-complex-toils-in-both-Golan-and-Gaza-> 
reported that “The US, Jordan and Israel are quietly backing the mixed 
bag of some 30 Syrian rebel factions”, some of which had just “seized 
control of the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, the only transit 
point between Israeli and Syrian Golan.” However, Debkafile noted, 
“al-Qaeda elements have permeated all those factions.” Israel has 
provided limited support to these rebels in the form of “medical care,” 
as well as “arms, intelligence and food…

    “Israel acted as a member, along with the US and Jordan, of a
    support system for rebel groups fighting in southern Syria. Their
    efforts are coordinated through a war-room which the Pentagon
    established last year near Amman. The US, Jordanian and Israeli
    officers manning the facility determine in consultation which rebel
    factions are provided with reinforcements from the special training
    camps run for Syrian rebels in Jordan, and which will receive arms.
    All three governments understand perfectly that, notwithstanding all
    their precautions, some of their military assistance is bound to
    percolate to al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, Jabhat Al-Nusra, which is
    fighting in rebel ranks. Neither Washington or Jerusalem or Amman
    would be comfortable in admitting they are arming al-Qaeda’s Nusra
    Front in southern Syria.”

This support also went to ISIS. Although the latter was originally 
founded in Iraq in October 2006, by 2013 the group had significantly 
expanded its operations in Syria working alongside al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra 
until February 2014, when ISIS was formally denounced by al-Qaeda. Even 
so, experts on the region’s Islamist groups point out that the alleged 
rift 
<http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/09/06/We-re-forgetting-something-ghastly-about-al-Nusra-Front.html> 
between al-Nusra and ISIS, while real, is not as fraught as one might 
hope, constituting a mere difference in tactics rather than fundamental 
ideology.

Officially, the US government’s financial support for the FSA goes 
through the Washington DC entity, the Syrian Support Group (SSG), Syrian 
Support Group (SSG 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/world/middleeast/syrian-group-in-united-states-seeks-to-arm-rebels-against-assad.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&pagewanted=all&>) 
which was incorporated in April 2012. The SSG is licensed via the US 
Treasury Department to “export, re-export, sell, or supply to the Free 
Syrian Army (‘FSA’) financial, communications, logistical, and other 
services otherwise prohibited by Executive Order 13582 in order to 
support the FSA.”

In mid-2013, the Obama administration intensified its support to the 
rebels with a new classified executive order 
<http://m.europe.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324188604578543820387158806?mobile=y> 
reversing its previous policy limiting US direct support to only 
nonlethal equipment. As before, the order would aim to supply weapons 
strictly to “moderate” forces in the FSA.

Except the government’s vetting procedures to block Islamist extremists 
from receiving US weapons have never worked.

A year later, Mother Jones 
<http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/syrian-rebel-aid-handwritten-receipts> 
found that the US government has “little oversight over whether US 
supplies are falling prey to corruption – or into the hands of 
extremists,” and relies “on too much good faith.” The US government 
keeps track of rebels receiving assistance purely through “handwritten 
receipts provided by rebel commanders in the field,” and the judgement 
of its allies. Countries supporting the rebels – the very same which 
have empowered al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists – “are doing audits of the 
delivery of lethal and nonlethal supplies.”

Thus, with the Gulf states still calling the shots on the ground, it is 
no surprise that by September last year, eleven prominent rebel groups 
distanced themselves from the ‘moderate’ opposition leadership and 
allied themselves 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/world/middleeast/syria-crisis.html?ref=world&_r=1&> 
with al-Qaeda.

By the SSG’s own conservative estimate, as much as 15% of rebel fighters 
are Islamists affiliated to al-Qaeda, either through the Jabhut al-Nusra 
faction, or its breakaway group ISIS. But privately, Pentagon officials 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/extremist-element-among-syrian-rebels-growing-worry-f8C11115141> 
estimate that “more than 50%” of the FSA is comprised of Islamist 
extremists, and according to rebel sources neither FSA chief Gen Salim 
Idris nor his senior aides engage in much vetting, decisions about which 
are made typically by local commanders.


      Part 2 – THE LONG WAR


        *Follow the money*

Media reports following ISIS’ conquest of much of northern and central 
Iraq this summer have painted the group as the world’s most 
super-efficient, self-financed, terrorist organisation that has been 
able to consolidate itself exclusively through extensive looting of 
Iraq’s banks and funds from black market oil sales. Much of this 
narrative, however, has derived from dubious sources, and overlooked 
disturbing details.

One senior anonymous intelligence source told Guardian correspondent 
Martin Chulov 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/15/iraq-isis-arrest-jihadists-wealth-power>, 
for instance, that over 160 computer flash sticks obtained from an ISIS 
hideout revealed information on ISIS’ finances that was completely new 
to the intelligence community.

“Before Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875m [£515m],” said the 
official on the funds obtained largely via “massive cashflows from the 
oilfields of eastern Syria, which it had commandeered in late 2012.” 
Afterwards, “with the money they robbed from banks and the value of the 
military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5bn to that.” 
The thrust of the narrative coming from intelligence sources was simple: 
“They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all 
behind them, which we had long known. They don’t need one.”

    “ISIS’ half-a-billion-dollar bank heist makes it world’s richest
    terror group,” /claimed the Telegraph, adding that the figure did
    not include additional stolen gold bullion, and millions more
    grabbed from banks/ “across the region.”

This story of ISIS’ stupendous bank looting spree across Iraq made 
global headlines but turned out to be disinformation 
<http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-never-stole-430-million-from-banks-2014-7>. 
Senior Iraqi officials and bankers confirmed that banks in Iraq, 
including Mosul where ISIS supposedly stole $430 million, had faced no 
assault, remain open, and are guarded by their own private security forces.

How did the story come about? One of its prime sources was Iraqi 
parliamentarian Ahmed Chalabi 
<http://www.salon.com/2014/07/21/long_slide_into_the_abyss_cheneys_old_pal_ahmad_chalabi_is_back/> 
– the same man who under the wing of his ‘Iraqi National Congress’ 
peddled false intelligence about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/ahmed-chalabi-discredited-wmd-figure-floated-iraq-pm-n148436> 
and ties to al-Qaeda.

In June, Chalabi met with the US ambassador to Iraq, Robert Beecroft, 
and Brett McGurk, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary of 
state for Iraq and Iran. According to sources cited by Buzzfeed 
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/ahmad-chalabi-conned-america-into-war-now-aims-to-lead-i#29jksvi> 
in June, Beecroft “has been meeting Chalabi for months and has dined at 
his mansion in Baghdad.”


        *Follow the oil*

But while ISIS has clearly obtained funding from donors in the Gulf 
states, many of its fighters having broken away from the more 
traditional al-Qaeda affiliated groups like Jabhut al-Nusra, it has also 
successfully leveraged its control over Syrian and Iraqi oil fields.

In January, the New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/world/middleeast/rebels-in-syria-claim-control-of-resources.html> 
reported that “Islamist rebels and extremist groups have seized control 
of most of Syria’s oil and gas resources”, bolstering “the fortunes of 
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and the Nusra Front, both 
of which are offshoots of al-Qaeda.” Al-Qaeda affiliated rebels had 
“seized control of the oil and gas fields scattered across the country’s 
north and east,” while more moderate “Western-backed rebel groups do not 
appear to be involved in the oil trade, in large part because they have 
not taken over any oil fields.”

Yet the west had directly aided these Islamist groups in their efforts 
to operationalise Syria’s oil fields. In April 2013, for instance, the 
Times noted that al-Qaeda rebels had taken over key regions of Syria: 
“Nusra’s hand is felt most strongly in Aleppo”, where the al-Qaeda 
affiliate had established in coordination with other rebel groups 
including ISIS <http://www.aymennjawad.org/13420/jabhat-al-nusra-aleppo> 
“a Shariah Commission” running “a police force and an Islamic court that 
hands down sentences that have included lashings.” Al-Qaeda fighters 
also “control the power plant and distribute flour to keep the city’s 
bakeries running.” Additionally, they “have seized government oil 
fields” in provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, and now make a “profit 
from the crude they produce.”

Lost in the fog of media hype was the disconcerting fact that these 
al-Qaeda rebel bread and oil operations in Aleppo, Deir al-Zour and 
Hasaka were directly and indirectly supported by the US and the European 
Union (EU). One account by the Washington Post 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-feeds-syrians-but-secretly/2013/04/14/bfbc0ba6-a3b3-11e2-bd52-614156372695_story.html> 
for instance refers to a stealth mission in Aleppo “to deliver food and 
other aid to needy Syrians – all of it paid for by the US government,” 
including the supply of flour. “The bakery is fully supplied with flour 
paid for by the United States,” the Post continues, noting that local 
consumers, however, “credited Jabhat al-Nusra – a rebel group the United 
States has designated a terrorist organisation because of its ties to 
al-Qaeda – with providing flour to the region, though he admitted he 
wasn’t sure where it comes from.”

And in the same month that al-Qaeda’s control of Syria’s main oil 
regions in Deir al-Zour and Hasaka was confirmed, the EU voted to ease 
an oil embargo <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22254996> on 
Syria to allow oil to be sold on international markets from these very 
al-Qaeda controlled oil fields. European companies would be permitted to 
buy crude oil and petroleum products from these areas, although 
transactions would be approved by the Syrian National Coalition. Due to 
damaged infrastructure, oil would be trucked by road to Turkey where the 
nearest refineries are located.

    “The logical conclusion from this craziness is that Europe will be
    funding al-Qaeda,” /said //Joshua Landis/
    <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/19/eu-syria-oil-jihadist-al-qaida>/,
    a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma/.

Just two months later, a former senior staffer at the Syria Support 
Group in DC, David Falt, leaked internal SSG emails 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10215068/Wests-main-aid-group-for-Syrian-rebels-collapses-into-disarray.html> 
confirming that the group was “obsessed” with brokering “jackpot” oil 
deals on behalf of the FSA for Syria’s rebel-run oil regions.

    “The idea they could raise hundreds of millions from the sale of the
    oil came to dominate the work of the SSG to the point no real
    attention was paid to the nature of the conflict,” /said Falt,
    referring in particular to SSG’s director Brian Neill Sayers, who
    before his SSG role worked with NATO’s Operations Division. Their
    aim was to raise money for the rebels by selling the rights to
    Syrian oil./


        *Tacit complicity in IS oil smuggling*

Even as al-Qaeda fighters increasingly decide to join up with IS, the ad 
hoc black market oil production and export infrastructure established by 
the Islamist groups in Syria has continued to function with, it seems, 
the tacit support of regional and western powers.

According to Ali Ediboglu 
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ar/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html>, 
a Turkish MP for the border province of Hatay, IS is selling the bulk of 
its oil from regions in Syria and Mosul in Iraq through Turkey, with the 
tacit consent of Turkish authorities: “They have laid pipes from 
villages near the Turkish border at Hatay. Similar pipes exist also at 
[the Turkish border regions of] Kilis, Urfa and Gaziantep. They transfer 
the oil to Turkey and parlay it into cash. They take the oil from the 
refineries at zero cost. Using primitive means, they refine the oil in 
areas close to the Turkish border and then sell it via Turkey. This is 
worth $800 million.” He also noted that the extent of this and related 
operations indicates official Turkish complicity. “Fighters from Europe, 
Russia, Asian countries and Chechnya are going in large numbers both to 
Syria and Iraq, crossing from Turkish territory. There is information 
that at least 1,000 Turkish nationals are helping those foreign fighters 
sneak into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. The National Intelligence 
Organization (MIT) is allegedly involved. None of this can be happening 
without MIT’s knowledge.”

Similarly, there is evidence that authorities in the Kurdish region of 
Iraq are also turning a blind eye to IS oil smuggling. In July, Iraqi 
officials 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12505-official-isis-is-selling-iraqi-oil> 
said that IS had begun selling oil extracted from in the northern 
province of Salahuddin. One official pointed out that “the Kurdish 
peshmerga forces stopped the sale of oil at first, but later allowed 
tankers to transfer and sell oil.”

State of Law coalition MP Alia Nasseef also accused the Kurdistan 
Regional Government (KRG) of secretly trading oil with IS: “What is 
happening shows the extent of the massive conspiracy against Iraq by 
Kurdish politicians… The [illegal] sale of Iraqi oil to ISIS or anyone 
else is something that would not surprise us.” Although Kurdish 
officials have roundly rejected these accusations, informed sources 
<http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn%3AGKP.L&display=discussion&threshold=0&action=detail&id=11338779> 
told the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat that Iraqi crude captured by ISIS 
was “being sold to Kurdish traders in the border regions straddling 
Iraq, Iran and Syria, and was being shipped to Pakistan where it was 
being sold ‘for less than half its original price.’”

An official statement <http://www.aawsat.net/2014/08/article55335732> in 
August from Iraq’s Oil Ministry warned that any oil not sanctioned by 
Baghdad could include crude smuggled illegally from IS:

    “International purchasers [of crude oil] and other market
    participants should be aware that any oil exports made without the
    authorisation of the Ministry of Oil may contain crude oil
    originating from fields under the control of [ISIS].”

“Countries like Turkey have turned a blind eye to the practice” of IS 
oil smuggling, said Luay al-Khateeb 
<http://www.albawaba.com/business/isis-oil-sales-598772>, a fellow at 
the Brookings Doha Center, “and international pressure should be mounted 
to close down black markets in its southern region.” So far there has 
been no such pressure. Meanwhile, IS oil smuggling continues, with 
observers inside and outside Turkey 
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-turkey-turned-blind-eye-isis-took-advantage/> 
noting that the Turkish government is tacitly allowing IS to flourish as 
it prefers the rebels to the Assad regime.

According to former Iraqi oil minister Isam al-Jalabi, “Turkey is the 
biggest winner from the Islamic State’s oil smuggling trade.” Both 
traders and oil firms are involved, he said, with the low prices 
allowing for “massive” profits for the countries facilitating the smuggling.


        *Buying ISIS oil?*

Early last month, a tanker carrying over a million barrels in crude oil 
from northern Iraq’s Kurdish region arrived at the Texas Gulf of Mexico. 
The oil had been refined in the Iraqi Kurdish region before being pumped 
through a new pipeline from the KRG area ending up at Ceyhan, Turkey, 
where it was then loaded onto the tanker for shipping to the US. 
Baghdad’s efforts to stop the oil sale on the basis of its having 
national jurisdiction were rebuffed by American courts 
<http://www.internationalenergylawyers.com/iraq-fails-to-seize-kurdish-crude-oil-bound-for-texas/>.

In early September, the European Union’s ambassador to Iraq, Jana 
Hybášková, told the EU Foreign Affairs Committee 
<http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184823#.VA8Gv0u4lSU> 
that “several EU member states have bought oil from the Islamic State 
(IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist organisation that has been brutally 
conquering large portions of Iraq and Syria,” according to Israel 
National News. She however “refused to divulge the names of the 
countries despite being asked numerous times.”

A third end-point for the KRG’s crude this summer, once again shipped 
via Turkey’s port of Ceyhan, was Israel’s southwestern port of Ashkelon 
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118549/israel-and-kurdistans-alleged-oil-deal-putting-us-notice>. 
This is hardly news though. In May, Reuters 
<http://www.cnbc.com/id/101676275> revealed that Israeli and US oil 
refineries had been regularly purchasing and importing KRG’s disputed oil.

Meanwhile, as this triangle of covert oil shipments in which ISIS crude 
appears to be hopelessly entangled becomes more established, Turkey has 
increasingly demanded that the US pursue formal measures to lift 
obstacles 
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/832866de-22fc-11e4-a424-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3CpHtocCw> 
to Kurdish oil sales to global markets. The KRG plans to export as much 
as 1 million barrels of oil a day by next year through its pipeline 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/08/12/how-far-will-obamas-support-for-the-iraqi-kurds-go/> 
to Turkey.

The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline: Iraqi Kurdistan alone could hold up to 45 
billion barrels of oil, allowing exports of up to 4 million barrels a 
day in the next decade if successfully brought to production

Among the many oil and gas firms active in the KRG capital, Erbil, are 
ExxonMobil and Chevron. They are drilling in the region for oil under 
KRG contracts, though operations have been halted due to the crisis. No 
wonder Steve Coll writes in the New Yorker 
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/oil-erbil> that Obama’s air 
strikes and arms supplies to the Kurds – notably not to Baghdad – 
effectively amount to “the defense of an undeclared Kurdish oil state 
whose sources of geopolitical appeal – as a long-term, non-Russian 
supplier of oil and gas to Europe, for example – are best not spoken of 
in polite or naïve company.” The Kurds are now busy working to 
“quadruple” their export capacity 
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/kurds-said-to-plan-quadrupled-oil-exports-on-pump-breakthrough.html>, 
while US policy has increasingly shifted toward permitting Kurdish 
exports 
<http://www.aa.com.tr/en/news/380371--us-policy-favours-selling-of-kurdish-oil> 
– a development that would have major ramifications for Iraq’s national 
territorial integrity.

To be sure, as the offensive against IS ramps up, the Kurds are now 
selectively cracking down on IS smuggling efforts – but the measures are 
too little, too late.


        *A new map*

The Third Iraq War has begun. With it, longstanding neocon dreams to 
partition Iraq into three along ethnic and religious lines have been 
resurrected.

White House officials now estimate that the fight against the region’s 
‘Islamic State’ will last years 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/world/middleeast/destroying-isis-may-take-3-years-white-house-says.html?_r=0>, 
and may outlive the Obama administration. But this ‘long war’ vision 
goes back to nebulous ideas formally presented by late RAND Corp analyst 
Laurent Muraweic before the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board 
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2002/08/the_powerpoint_that_rocked_the_pentagon.html> 
at the invitation of then chairman Richard Perle. That presentation 
described Iraq as a “tactical pivot” by which to transform the wider 
Middle East.

Brian Whitaker, former Guardian Middle East editor 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/03/worlddispatch.iraq>, 
rightly noted that the Perle-RAND strategy drew inspiration from a 1996 
paper published by the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and 
Political Studies, co-authored by Perle and other neocons who held top 
positions in the post-9/11 Bush administration.

The policy paper advocated a strategy that bears startling resemblance 
to the chaos unfolding in the wake of the expansion of the ‘Islamic 
State’ – Israel would “shape its strategic environment” by first 
securing the removal of Saddam Hussein. “Jordan and Turkey would form an 
axis along with Israel to weaken and ‘roll back’ Syria.” This axis would 
attempt to weaken the influence of Lebanon, Syria and Iran by “weaning” 
off their Shi’ite populations. To succeed, Israel would need to engender 
US support, which would be obtained by Benjamin Netanyahu formulating 
the strategy “in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into 
themes of American administrations during the cold war.”

The 2002 Perle-RAND plan was active in the Bush administration’s 
strategic thinking on Iraq shortly before the 2003 war. According to US 
private intelligence firm Stratfor 
<http://www.profutures.com/article.php/91/>, in late 2002, then 
vice-president Dick Cheney and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz 
had co-authored a scheme under which central Sunni-majority Iraq would 
join with Jordan; the northern Kurdish regions would become an 
autonomous state; all becoming separate from the southern Shi’ite region.

The strategic advantages of an Iraq partition, Stratfor argued, focused 
on US control of oil:

    “After eliminating Iraq as a sovereign state, there would be no fear
    that one day an anti-American government would come to power in
    Baghdad, as the capital would be in Amman [Jordan]. Current and
    potential US geopolitical foes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would be
    isolated from each other, with big chunks of land between them under
    control of the pro-US forces.

    Equally important, Washington would be able to justify its long-term
    and heavy military presence in the region as necessary for the
    defense of a young new state asking for US protection – and to
    secure the stability of oil markets and supplies. That in turn would
    help the United States gain direct control of Iraqi oil and replace
    Saudi oil in case of conflict with Riyadh.”

The expansion of the ‘Islamic State’ has provided a pretext for the 
fundamental contours of this scenario to unfold, with the US and British 
looking to re-establish a long-term military presence in Iraq in the 
name of the “defense of a young new state.”

In 2006, Cheney’s successor, Joe Biden, also indicated his support for 
the ‘soft partition 
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/joe-biden-iraq-107858.html>’ of 
Iraq along ethno-religious lines – a position which the co-author of the 
Biden-Iraq plan, Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, now 
argues is “the only solution” to the current crisis.

Also in 2006, the Armed Forces Journal 
<http://www.nafeezahmed.com/2006/08/us-army-contemplates-redrawing-middle.html> 
published a map of the Middle East with its borders thoroughly re-drawn, 
courtesy of Lt. Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters, who had previously been 
assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence 
where he was responsible for future warfare. As for the goals of this 
plan, apart from “security from terrorism” and “the prospect of 
democracy”, Peters also mentioned “access to oil supplies in a region 
that is destined to fight itself.”

In 2008, the strategy re-surfaced – once again via RAND Corp 
<http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf> 
– through a report funded by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command 
on how to prosecute the ‘long war.’ Among its strategies, one scenario 
advocated by the report was ‘Divide and Rule’ which would involve:

    “… exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups
    to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on
    internal conflicts.”

Simultaneously, the report suggested that the US could foster conflict 
between Salafi-jihadists and Shi’ite militants by:

    “… shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes… as a way of containing
    Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.”

One way or another, some semblance of this plan is in motion. Last week, 
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman 
<http://www.newsweek.com/israel-tells-us-kurdish-independence-foregone-conclusion-256371> 
told US secretary of state John Kerry:

    “Iraq is breaking up before our eyes and it would appear that the
    creation of an independent Kurdish state is a foregone conclusion.”

The rise of the ‘Islamic State’ is not just a direct consequence of this 
neocon vision, tied as it is to a dangerous covert operations strategy 
that has seen al-Qaeda linked terrorists as a tool to influence local 
populations – it has in turn offered a pretext for the launch of a new 
era of endless war, the spectre of a prolonged US-led military presence 
in the energy-rich Persian Gulf region, and a return to the dangerous 
imperial temptation to re-configure the wider regional order.


*Nafeez Ahmed* <http://www.nafeezahmed.com/>*is a bestselling author, 
investigative journalist and international security scholar. He has 
contributed to two major terrorism investigations in the US and UK, the 
9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest, and has advised the Royal 
Military Academy Sandhust, British Foreign Office and US State 
Department, among government agencies.*

*Nafeez is a regular contributor to **The Guardian* 
<http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nafeez-ahmed>*where he writes about 
the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy and economic 
crises. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, 
The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde 
diplomatique, among many others.*

*Nafeez’s just released new novel, **ZERO POINT* <http://zro.pt/>*, 
predicted a new war in Iraq to put down an al-Qaeda insurgency. Follow 
him on Twitter **@nafeezahmed* <https://twitter.com/nafeezahmed>*and 
**Facebook* <http://www.facebook.com/DrNafeezAhmed>*.*

-- 
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