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The United States’ Biggest “Allies” Are Funding ISIS
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar & Turkey all back terror group
President Barack Obama’s authorization of air strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq serves as an opportunity to remind ourselves which countries are bankrolling the deadly terror group.
The answer; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar – three of the United States’ biggest allies in the region.
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Last night Obama announced
limited air strikes to slow the advance of ISIS fighters and help
members of the Yazidi religious minority group who were forced to flee
into a mountainous region in the north of Iraq to avoid slaughter.
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However, the administration has failed to put pressure
on several Gulf states that are directly responsible for helping ISIS
gain a foothold in Iraq in the first place.
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As the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin documents,
“The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad,
was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi
Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.”
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In addition to funding itself through criminal activity
and punitive taxes imposed on the local population on pain of death,
ISIS relies on a steady stream of income from countries that have
bankrolled extremist Islamists for years yet have faced zero backlash
from successive White House administrations. Even evidence of direct Saudi involvement in 9/11 failed to generate any reconsideration of who America calls its friends.
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“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and
that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking
system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they
are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now
Iraq.”
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State backing for ISIS, now the wealthiest terror group
in the world, prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to point the
finger directly at Saudi Arabia and Qatar during a France 24 television
interview. “I accuse them of inciting and encouraging the terrorist
movements. I accuse them of supporting them politically and in the
media, of supporting them with money and by buying weapons for them,” said al-Maliki.
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In failing to call these countries to account for
funding ISIS, the White House has deliberately placed the importance of
isolating Iran and Syria over and above the stability of the entire
region.
The White House is also directly responsible for the
spread of ISIS militants having backed other rebel groups in Syria which
were once allied with and then taken over by ISIS.
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Indeed, some evidence suggests that the U.S. even
trained some of the Islamists who went on to join ISIS at a secret base
in Jordan in 2012.
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Aaron Klein was told
by Jordanian officials that, “dozens of future 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.”
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Yet another U.S. ally – Turkey – also trained ISIS fighters at a location in the vicinity of Incirlik Air Base near Adana.
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According to a Shiite source close to Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Obama administration turned a blind eye to
the fact that Turkey was equipping and then sending fighters to Syria
before they went on to Iraq. The source even went on to accuse the White
House of being “an accomplice” in the ISIS takeover of major Iraqi
cities.
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Whether or not the “humanitarian” air strikes on Iraq
are really aimed at stopping the terror wrought by ISIS, or are merely
part of a ploy to create a justification for a long-awaited attack on
Syria, the White House itself, as well as some of America’s closest
supposed allies, all share some of the blame in aiding the growth of
ISIS in the region.
