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Even now the claim that the Islamic State is a calculated product of the United States’ foreign policy reeks of conspiracy theory, and yet the evidence accepted now by the majority of analysts points precisely in that direction. As early as the summer of 2013 Homeland Security, the FBI, and other agencies of the US internal security apparatus began rounding up, arresting, intimidating, and interrogating common or garden conspiracists and members of fringe hacktivist groups who had begun to make the connection between the United States’ clandestine operations in the Middle East and the Islamic State, leading in some cases to conviction and imprisonment.
It was not long, however, until this same connection was made by elements of the mainstream media. The New York Post, together with the Guardian, Russia Today, and Al Jazeera – acting on reports from inside ISIS – began publishing the details of the CIA’s relationship with various rebel groups which later came together in the formation of the Islamic State. Even after the April 2013 ISIS territorial claim evidence was surfacing from within Iraq of US weapons and communications equipment linking the self-styled Caliphate to the United States.
Since then Reuters, the Associated Press, and others have been picking up information on secret US training bases for ISIS militants in both Syria and Jordan. Back in 2010 when these, as yet disunited, extremist factions were making inroads into northern Syria from the bandit country of western Iraq created by US intervention the Syrian government (a strategic Russian ally) appealed to Washington for assistance, the US declined and armed the rebels instead. Fast-forward to the present and the US-led coalition in Syria is now using the perceived menace of ISIS as a pretext for a comprehensive assault on the same Syrian government that asked for help.
While on the surface this might all look to be as crazy as a bag of hammers, nothing of what is happening is irrational. The only irrationality we are being subjected to is from the Western rightist press which is now using isolated stabbings in London as a reason to ramp up the fear. At bottom here is the current resurgence of Russia and the United States’ Cold War style games directed towards thwarting Russia’s plans in the region (read: oil). What has become clear – with or without secret US training camps – is that ISIS and the US are different arms of the same imperialist beast, and we have to start waking up to this fact before it is too late.
Ùr-Fhàsaidh
Jason Michael
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