Stratfor Global Research, Austin Texas, publishes useful reports by author George Friedman that are available to the public. Stratfor also sells an depth subscription service. Their October 29th story about the Islamic State Iraq and Syria (ISIS), earns our comment.
George Friedman is the Chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996 that is now a leader in the field of global intelligence. Friedman guides Stratfor’s strategic vision and oversees the development and training of the company’s intelligence unit.
Dear Dr Friedman:
Divisions Could Weaken U.S.-Led Coalition in Iraq and Syria (1), is most helpful, and I would appreciate your comment on one question about ISIL that you have not yet addressed, who funds it?
Who is financing the Islamic State In Syria and Lavant (ISIL) (ISIS)? You state: “The coalition’s division of the battle space into two parts has already led to differences in target selection. Since earlier limited U.S. operations in Iraq expanded into Syria, the United States and Arab coalition members have focused on critical infrastructure in Syria that supports Islamic State operations in Syria and Iraq. This has included command centers, finance operations, supply depots and, most recently, oil refineries. The coalition’s strategy in Syria has been to degrade the Islamic State’s military capabilities through destruction or disruption of the critical assets that support it.”
But, if ISSL is not an internal “uprising” of one religious tribe against the other, as we are told by our media, and as is represented by Washington policy, then bombing their supplies will not work.
Other observers of of ISIL seem to think it is an army, a small but well paid professional one, as seems clear by its success. It appears to be an insurgent army, led by war professionals from all over the world. Were it simply a democratic internal uprising like Arab Spring in Egypt, the US would not be soliciting the whole world to oppose it, for Iraq and Syria are relatively poor states, proven not be a threat to the USA.
ISIL is illogically being played up in certain US religious circles as Islam vs Christianity, or terrorism vs civilization. To the contrary, we see and hear movies from ISIL showing European faces (and voices) next to Arab faces. And the FBI has all but admitted that unknown thousands of youths have been recruited from all over the USA to fight for ISIL, and there are now documented cases of American citizens being killed in US raids on ISIL. We know from former mercenaries that Blackwater (now Xe) pays $9-20,000 per month to US volunteers in IRAQ. Please tell me, what is ISIL’s pay scale?
The FBI does not say how much ISIL pays recruits, but in an October 26 story in The Telegraph, it tells of several American teenage girls from just one city, Denver CO., that have been recruited by ISIL (2) and have been arrested by the FBI while on route to Syria. It seems the FBI is worried about this being a mass movement of American youth.
The USA command announced it has recently destroyed oil refineries in Syria said to be controlled by ISIL. This does not add up, for if the refineries belong to Syria, and these can be operated to benefit very poor people, as well as all of us world wide who benefit from more energy. Why destroy infrastructure in an attempt to starve out ISIL? Isn’t that what Israel did in Gaza in order to punish the Gazans, where Israel’s goal has made Gaza unfit for human habitation. If the U.S.A. has determined which refinery is benefiting which tribe, why can’t we be told who provides the enormous money and equipment that finances this very real ISIL army?
For example, Bloomberg News recently told us: “Video footage and eyewitness accounts paint a picture of Kurds with light weapons shooting from inside homes and behind mud walls around the Syrian town of Kobani, while Islamic State militants with tanks and heavy artillery rumble across nearby fields.“(3) But Bloomberg has failed to tell us the manufacture and sources of this equipment.
Could it be this black-out is intentional? U.S. intelligence claims to know when a single Russian truck crosses the border into Ukraine, and the make and model of the truck. Why does it not tell us who pays the ISIL army and who manufactures its trucks, guns and tanks? Not being an armor specialist, this reader does not know if I am looking at Russian, French or U.S. tanks. But surely Stratford Global Research can find out, and you would be doing us a service that I for one would be glad to pay for.
Informed academics from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and others have stated in public forums, that Saudi Arabia, and other state dictatorships in the Middle East are believed to be funding ISIL, and providing weapons.
Saudi’s are thought to be among the U.S.A.’s best allies in the Middle East. If even partly true, this would suggest that the war on ISIL is a thinly disguised reactivation of the US war on Iran, and that the enemy needed for such a war may be a proxy enemy supported by the U.S.A.’s biggest allies in the middle East. Is it possible that the U.S. taxpayers are funding both sides, paying for air raids, and now drones to destroy equipment originally made in the USA, abandoned in Iraq, and being reemployed by a mystery army called ISIL? This notion seems find support in your most recent, and very excellent story that tells us President Obama does not really run the war games in Washington.(4) So who does?
Charles E. Carlson
Listen to Chuck discuss this article: WHTT Speaks Out: “Who Funds ISIL Mystery Army?”
(4) http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/principle-rigor-and-execution-matter-us-foreign-policy#axzz3HMxjacJo
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