This could all fit Osama\u2019s carefully laid-out trap \u2013 over the years – of finally managing to expel the US from the Middle East via a constant war of attrition, slowly bleeding the Empire of Chaos. Eric Margolis has alluded to this possibility here<\/a>.<\/p>\n At a minimum, the US and some selected allies indeed have been doing Al-Qaeda\u2019s bidding \u2013 even though ISIS\/IS has split from \u201chistoric\u201d<\/em>Al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d<\/em>, about to fight ISIS\/IS\/The Caliph, includes Britain, Australia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. No less than five out of these seven happen to be the ones who trained\/weaponized\/facilitated the \u201cflowers of evil\u201d<\/em> of ISIS\/IS blooming in Syria.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s no wonder the Arab Street is drowning in skepticism about who\u2019s really running the ISIS\/IS show. It can\u2019t be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a Caliph Ibrahim, all by himself. How come The Caliph, out of the blue, crosses the desert with a skilled, full-fledged army crammed with advanced artillery to capture a territory larger than the UK?<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the powerful House of Saud\u2019s PR lobby<\/a> is absolutely monolithic; Wahhabism \u2013 which has been boosting\/funding fanatics worldwide since the early days of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan \u2013 is simply not to be blamed for what The Caliph has been up to. And yet it\u2019s Saudi ideology which ultimately spawned the Frankenstein Caliph leading the freak sons of the Syrian \u201crevolution\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n Show me the money <\/strong><\/p>\n ISIS\/IS is a formidable machine oiled by all forms of extortion, kidnapping for ransom, outright bank and jewelry robbery and taxing of residents. But the Holy Grail is definitely oil smuggling.<\/p>\n The Caliph now controls seven oil fields and two refineries in northern Iraq, plus six oil fields in northeastern Syria \u2013 extracting, realistically, at least 40,000 barrels a day. They sell all this oil at a cut-rate $25 to a maximum of $60 a barrel. Brent crude, as a comparison, is currently over $100 on the London ICE Futures Europe exchange.<\/p>\n The Caliph is making roughly $2 million a day, and everything paid for in cash or bartered goods. No one knows who\u2019s buying from the Islamic State\u2019s complex distribution network of middlemen, but the fact is the oil flows from Caliph-controlled \u201cSyraq\u201d<\/em> to Turkey and Jordan.<\/p>\n Being so flush, no wonder The Caliph\u2019s armies are heading towards Aleppo; they are less than 50 km away, and could soon easily take over some eastern suburbs.<\/p>\n The Obama administration, meanwhile, prefers to excel at sanctioning Russia. If they were really serious at targeting The Caliph, they\u2019d be following the money, deploying local intel to track where the money actually is (certainly not in a bank). Instead, all the rhetoric in the Beltway is about more bombing of – another historical irony – made in USA hardware left behind by the Iraq army; more drones; and eventually, more \u201cboots on the ground\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n The \u201cknown known\u201d<\/em> \u2013 to quote Donald \u201cRummy\u201d Rumsfeld \u2013 in the Beltway \u201cdebate\u201d<\/em> is that for the CIA and the Pentagon, fighting The Caliph is the absolutely perfect excuse to eventually impose regime change in both Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n Washington has already got regime change-lite in Baghdad. The CIA and the Pentagon are thinking in terms of We bomb The Caliph\/Caliph fights Assad\/Hezbollah gets involved\/Divide and Rule and More Chaos\/We bomb a little to the side\/Assad falls.<\/p>\n It won\u2019t work, though. Washington thought \u2013 until the capture of Mosul \u2013 that The Caliph was under control. But he has a mind of his own – and a lot of cash still flowing from powerful Saudi and Kuwaiti backers, apart from the oil smuggling. The Caliph dreams of being intimately involved in the House of Saud\u2019s succession, and even making a play for power himself.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a better serial killer than you <\/strong><\/p>\n The Islamic State is a product of gruesome Tawhid & Jihad (\u201cMonotheism and Holy War\u201d<\/em>), led by Jordanian serial killer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, incinerated by a US missile in 2006. Zarqawi had pledged allegiance to Osama in 2004, and renamed his outfit Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). After he died, AQI turned into Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).<\/p>\n It took years for his successor, Ibrahim al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim to turn ISI into ISIS (adding the Levant) and trying to absorb Al-Qaeda\u2019s Syrian franchise, Jabhat Al-Nusra.<\/p>\n Al-Zawahiri, for his part, didn\u2019t like these shenanigans one bit. He insisted Jabhat al-Nusra was the real jihadi deal. Al-Baghdadi got a dressing down; fight in Iraq, not Syria. Bad move – al-Baghdadi ended up telling al-Zawahiri to stuff it.<\/p>\n Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.(Reuters \/ Social Media Website)<\/p><\/div>\n And al-Zawahiri finally \u201cexcommunicated\u201d ISIS.<\/p>\n Thus the myth was born that ISIS\/IS is way more hardcore than Al-Qaeda \u2013 a sterling PR move by The Caliph to bolster his and his outfit\u2019s charisma. For the multinational Google Jihad generation, if the grand mufti of Egypt, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) all dismiss ISIS\/IS, that\u2019s because it\u2019s the real deal. And it\u2019s wealthy, armed to the teeth and rules over a vast territory. It is reducing the Sykes-Picot agreement to dust.<\/p>\n So yes, The Caliph is indeed implementing Osama\u2019s trap \u2013 in his own way. Zarqawi tried to implement it. And Zarqawi is the predecessor of al-Baghdadi. But that\u2019s only part of the story.<\/p>\n The real juice is how The Caliph has now legitimized the Global War on Terror (GWOT) for \u201cdecades\u201d, in British Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s words. The indefatigable \u201csenior US military officials\u201d<\/em> have gone on red alert, warning that ISIS\/IS will soon \u201cthreaten\u201d the US and Europe. The Caliph is the new Osama.<\/p>\n And this only just a year after Obama \u2013 armed with his self-imposed red line \u2013 was about to bomb Syria because \u201cAssad must go\u201d<\/em> had \u201cgassed his own people.\u201d<\/em> And the ones who actually talked Obama out of this insanity were none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – now demonized with a vengeance by the Empire of Chaos.<\/p>\n Hollywood couldn\u2019t come up with a more far-fetched script. Deep in the bowels of a palatial abode in \u201cSyraq\u201d<\/em>, one can distinctly hear the sound of The Caliph laughing.<\/p>\n ___________________________<\/p>\n Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times\/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the author of <\/em><\/em>Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), <\/em>Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), and <\/em>Obama does Globalistan<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"isis\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/isis.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Abu](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi.jpg\")
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