United States support for ISIS

United States has been accused of providing support to ISIS, a terrorist militant organization that has been fighting Syrian government and Iraqi government and has caused great catastrophe. The allegations of support include deliberate and accidental support.

Iranian allegations

Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ali Khamenei claimed that The Americans supported ISIS to sell oil and break sieges placed against them.

A documentary made by an Iranian studio, called the Lord of War, revealed video footage taken by US military drones monitoring ISIS activities without taking act on against them including one of the well-publicized beheading ceremonies that ISIS staged and broadcast internationally. The footage were obtained by Iranian Quds Force Electronic warfare Unit which could infiltrate many US drones as they flew over ISIS-held regions. On one occasion US air force bombed Iraqi bulldozers that were digging tunnels to block advance of ISIS suicide vehicles. Another footage showed ISIS militants inside a US military base in al-Tanaf, close to the intersection of Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders.

Russian allegations

In October 2017, the Russian spokesman accussed the United States of "pretending" to fight ISIS. The Russian spokeman said "The US-led international coalition had sharply reduced its air strikes on Isis in Iraq in September, the same time as Russian air power began to help Syrian government forces retake Deir Ezzor province". According to the Russian spokeman foreign mercenaries and militants were allowed to cross the Iraqi border and reinforce ISIS front line against the advance of the Syrian army due to the respite in bombing. The Russian spokeman said "The actions of the Pentagon and the coalition demand an explanation. The Pentagon claimed that the Russian allegations are ridiculous and said "The Russian propaganda campaign should not be allowed to tarnish our partner forces unrelenting commitment to see these terrorists defeated".

In December 2017, Russian forign ministry has accused the United States of training former ISIS fighters in the US base Tanf. The United States said the Tanf facility is a temporary base used to train partner forces to fight ISIS. The United States has been rejecting similar accusations by the Russian government saying "Washington remains committed to killing off ISIS and denying it safe havens".

Russia has stated several times that areas that remain infested by ISIS overlap with foreign-controlled zones. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman once said that hundreds of terrorists with heavy arms including ISIS and Al-Nusra have hid among civilians in Rukban refugee camp near the border with Jordan under the privity of the US military which controls the 55-kilometer zone around its illegal Al-Tanf base on the Syrian territory.

Russia has claimed that US has supplied arms to ISIS fighters in Afghanistan.

Trump administration allegations

In 2016, while campaigning for President against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump claimed that Obama was "the founder of ISIS" and "the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton", who was Obama's Secretary of State. "His, [sic] the way he got out of Iraq was [sic] that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?" Trump said. PolitiFact and other media organizations stated that Trump's allegation was false because ISIS was formed in 2003, shortly after the US invasion of Iraq under the George W. Bush administration.

According to an interview given by former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lieutenant General Mike Flynn a year before he pled guilty to lying about communications with a Russian ambassador, US intelligence community reports indicating expansion of the Al-Qaeda insurgency in Iraq were consistently watered down as they reached top officials at the White House under the Obama administration. NSA chairwoman Susan Rice and senior officials of the US Central Command were seen by Flynn as responsible for distorting the reports. This, Flynn said, resulted in ignorance and inaction by top US officials towards an expanding insurgency "with interlinked logistics, transportation, information, money management and strike operations, all of it worthy of a multinational conglomerate." Flynn said that conditions in US-controlled Iraqi prisons resulted in radicalization of thousands of young Iraqis, some of whom would later become some of the top ISIS commanders. The US prisons also acted as a training ground for the extremists, with US Major General Douglas M. Stone, in charge of the US detention system in Iraq, calling it "a Jihadi university that was breeding more terrorists".

A secret US intelligence report in August 2012 predicted "the prospect of a 'Salafist principality' in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq".

Citing a 2013 DIA investigation, Richard Hayden Black, Republican member of the Virginia State Senate, pointed to "Washington’s ties with the Takfiris, They really are one and the same." The state senator mentioned a plan for transferring CIA arms thought some countries in order to supply all rebels, "including specifically ISIS (Daesh) and al-Qaeda." He declared "We do it indirectly because it’s unlawful to do it directly" and "extremely violent organizations are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIS (Daesh) and al-Qaeda."

Raqqa and Ramadi reports

According to a BBC investigation, under a deal struck by local city officials to spare civilian lives and collateral damage that would be caused by a battle, the US allowed hundreds of ISIS fighters including their most notorious members to secretly evacuate city of Raqqa with their families and equipments. The fighters would then spread out across Syria as part of what BBC describes “an exodus of the Islamic State”. A total of 4000 people were evacuated, as part of a convoy that was three kilometers long including 50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles. The ISIS fighters and their families wore suicide belts inside the convoy vehicles, threatening with explosions if the deal failed. Many foreign fighters including European nationals also joined the convoy. Some people heard the US-led coalition aircraft following the convoy, dropping illumination flares to light up the road.

The U.S. watched Islamic State fighters, vehicles and heavy equipment gather on the outskirts of Ramadi before the group retook the city in mid-May. The US provided air strikes and other support to the Iraqi military in their defense of the city, but the city was lost when Iraqi troops abandoned their posts.

Arms deflection

Although it did not allege that the US has supported ISIS, a 2017 report by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) found that weapons supplied by the United States and Saudi Arabia to the Syrian opposition have ended up in ISIS hands. The report also stated that the number of the US and Saudi supplied weapons in ISIS's arsenal were “far beyond those that would have been available through battle capture alone”. The report stated that 90% of the ISIS weapons and ammunition CAR analyzed were made in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.

Rand Paul, junior U.S. Senator from Kentucky, said that the U.S. government of indirectly supporting ISIL in the Syrian Civil War, by arming their allies and fighting their enemies in that country.

See also

• Timber Sycamore
• United States covert actions
• Finances of ISIL

External links

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