ISIL: Independent regional actor or CIA-Mossad proxy?

PressTV

Recent territorial gains in Iraq by the ISIL, the self-proclaimed Islamic State also known as ISIS or DAESH, allegedly without foreknowledge of the western powers, beg the question of who is behind the al-Qa’ida alumnus.

Pundits are quick to accuse Saudi Arabia, but other informed sources point to Qatar and Turkey as the main culprits behind the violent  Takfiri terrorist cum non-state actor. Still others claim that the ISIL is a U.S. and U.K. trained, CIA- Mossad proxy force led by a Jewish operative.

The ISIL has its origins in a Kurdish insurgent group, which formed after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and was headed by former arch terrorist Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, who swore allegiance to al-Qa’ida in 2004 to form al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI).  After al-Zarqawi’s death by a U.S. air raid in 2006, the surge in 2007 and the program of bribing Sunni tribesmen to renounce resistance against the American occupation, AQI experienced a period of decline, but rebounded after the start of the western regime change operation in Syria in 2011, when the leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, dispatched fighters for Jabhat al-Nusra while renaming his contingent in Iraq the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan was heavily involved with arming  Takfiri terrorists in Syria and Iraq during his tenure as head of Saudi intelligence from July 20, 2012 until his departure on April 15, 2014.  An ambassador to the U.S. for 22 years, Prince Bandar has freely employed terrorists in pursuit of U.S. and Saudi policy objectives, and even obliquely threatened Russian Prime Minister Putin with the disruption of the Sochi Winter Olympic games by extremists under Saudi control.  “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year,” Bandar reportedly said to Putin in a July 2013 meeting.

Qatar has been the chief logistical supplier to the Takfiri extremists attempting to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad. According to the New York Times, as of 2013 Qatar had supplied insurgents with some 85 planeloads of weapons and supplies as opposed to 37 for Saudi Arabia and lesser amounts for other actors such as Jordan.  While not as big a financial supporter as Qatar, Turkey nevertheless serves as the primary logistical base through which most munitions, materials and manpower are funneled to the foreign-backed militants in Syria.

In a press conference in August 2009 with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar, expressed his desire to route a pipeline across Syria to Turkey for exporting his country’s vast liquid natural gas reserves.  “We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey,” he exclaimed, and in pursuit of that goal, Qatar began aiding a foreign insurgency in Syria almost as soon as Muamar al-Gadhafi had been killed in Libya in October 2011.  Previously, Qatar had played a key role in toppling the Libyan regime by supplying rebels with weapons, supplies and training.

In January 2012 on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani publicly announced his desire to topple the Syrian government, declaring, “For such a situation to stop the killing…some troops should go to stop the killing.”  Then in February, Qatar’s Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani affirmed, “We should do whatever is necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves.”  To that end and at the request of Saudi deputy foreign minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud, a military command and control center was established in the Turkish city of Adana, which is home to the U.S. air base of Incirlik, a convenient location for forwarding Washington’s “nonlethal” aid.

Naming three Kuwaitis as prime fundraisers for ISIL, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen said, “Through fundraising appeals on social media and the use of financial networks, Shafi Al Ajmi, Hajaj Al Ajmi, and Al Anizi have been funding the terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq.”  Besides the funds funneling through Kuwait, ISIL seems to be developing its own financial sector. Paul Sullivan, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University in Washington, said, “ISIL is developing in a vital oil, gas and trade area of the world.”  Previously, ISIL gained control of the former Conoco gas field at Deir al-Zor in Syria, and, according reliable estimates, was already netting about $8 million a month before recent territorial gains in Iraq.

The U.S. sees itself and its western allies as being locked in “an epic struggle against adversaries bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant Western dominance.”  Of course ISIL plays a leading role as the current villain in this continuing drama that bears an uncanny resemblance to a U.S. Army mission trajectory called “Expanding Scope,” which is discussed in a 2008 report entitled “Unfolding the Future of the Long War” by the Rand Corporation. “A powerful Sunni Islamic state may prove even more troublesome than Iran,” the authors of the report caution, “especially in its support for SJ [Salafi-Jihadism].”

Yet despite the warning, the U.S. and its western allies have repeatedly armed and trained extremists to destabilize governments targeted for regime change, among them Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.  Concurring with the irrational policies of his western masters, the former Emir of Qatar expressed his belief that extremists could be transformed into political participants if promises of democracy and justice can be fulfilled. “I believe you will see this extremism transform into civilian life and civil society,” he insisted in an al-Jazeera interview on September 7, 2011.

But instead of transforming terrorists into political participants, the U.S., along with its Saudi, Qatari, Turkish and western allies, has created an out-of-control monster with upwards of 50,000 fighters controlling an area the size of Belgium.  “What began in Syria during the spring of 2011 as a simple uprising by a few so-called rebels has blossomed into a brazen and bloody movement led by the Salafi cabal, housed in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, to topple not just the Syrian regime, but also Iraq and Lebanon,” lamented Agha Shaukat Jafri.

Indeed, the ISIL not only poses an immediate threat to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, its rapid emergence as a regional actor is jeopardizing Saudi interests, which suggests rapprochement with Tehran would be wise, yet Riyadh continues to issue Iranophobic rhetoric.  “There’s no confidence in the Obama administration doing the right thing with Iran,” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal confided, “We’re really concerned – Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East countries – about this,” implying the existence of a de facto alliance among the Zionist regime, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, and possibly other regional players as well.

The ISIL may in fact be a CIA-Mossad proxy force. U.S. Senator John McCain has been photographed together with ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who, according to sources traceable to Edward Snowden as uncovered by Iran’s intelligence services, is really Simon Elliot, a Jewish agent for the Zionist intelligence agency Mossad.  The plan was to invade countries that constitute a threat to the Israeli entity in order to establish the biblical “Greater Israel.”

In any event, AKP deputy chairman Mehmet Ali Sahin is correct that bombing will not fix the mess the U.S. and its misguided allies have created. To eradicate the malignancy of Takfiri terrorism in the Middle East, the U.S. must cut its support for the Zionist regime, renounce regime change in Syria, and align itself with the only regional power that can help, namely Iran.

YAW/NN