{"id":47521,"date":"2014-09-15T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47521"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:36","slug":"follow-the-money-follow-the-oil-how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/follow-the-money-follow-the-oil-how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state\/","title":{"rendered":"How the West Created the Islamic State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the Money. Follow the Oil.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part 1 \u2013 OUR TERRORISTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated,\u201d Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon press conference in August.<\/p>\n

Military action is necessary to halt the spread of the ISIS \u201ccancer,\u201d said President Obama. Yesterday he called for expanded airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, and new measures to arm and train Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way to defeat [IS] is to stand firm and to send a very straightforward message,\u201d declared Prime Minister Cameron. \u201cA country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form \u2018ISIS\u2019, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS).<\/p>\n

Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Now despite Pentagon denials that there will be boots on the ground \u2013 and Obama\u2019s insistence that this would not be another \u201cIraq war\u201d \u2013 local Kurdish military and intelligence sources confirm that US and German special operations forces<\/a> are already \u201con the ground here. They are helping to support us in the attack.\u201d US airstrikes on ISIS positions and arms supplies to the Kurds have also been accompanied by British RAF reconnaissance flights over the region and UK weapons shipments<\/a> to Kurdish peshmerga forces.<\/p>\n

Divide and Rule in Iraq<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that we don\u2019t want the Salafis to throw bombs,\u201d said one US government defense consultant<\/a> in 2007. \u201cIt\u2019s who they throw them at \u2013 Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early during the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US covertly supplied arms to al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents even while ostensibly supporting an emerging Shi\u2019a-dominated administration.<\/p>\n

Pakistani defense sources interviewed by Asia Times<\/a> in February 2005 confirmed that insurgents described as \u201cformer Ba\u2019ath party\u201d loyalists \u2013 who were being recruited and trained<\/a> by \u201cal-Qaeda in Iraq\u201d under the leadership of the late Abu Musab Zarqawi \u2013 were being supplied Pakistan-manufactured weapons by the US. The arms shipments included rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. These arms \u201ccould not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them\u201d, a source told Syed Saleem Shahzad \u2013 the Times\u2019 Pakistan bureau chief who, \u201cknown for his exposes of the Pakistani military<\/a>\u201d according to the New Yorker, was murdered in 2011. Rather, the US is playing a double-game to \u201chead off\u201d the threat of a \u201cShi\u2019ite clergy-driven religious movement,\u201d said the Pakistani defense source.<\/p>\n

This was not the only way US strategy aided the rise of Zarqawi, a bin Laden mentee and brainchild of the extremist ideology that would later spawn \u2018ISIS.\u2019<\/p>\n

According to a little-known November report for the US Joint Special Operations University<\/a> (JSOU) and Strategic Studies Department, Dividing Our Enemies<\/em>, post-invasion Iraq was \u201can interesting case study of fanning discontent among enemies, leading to \u2018red-against-red\u2019 [enemy-against-enemy] firefights.\u201d<\/p>\n

While counterinsurgency on the one hand requires US forces to \u201cameliorate harsh or deprived living conditions of the indigenous populations\u201d to publicly win local hearts and minds, \u201cthe reverse side of this coin is one less discussed. It involves no effort to win over those caught in the crossfire of insurgent and counterinsurgent warfare, whether by bullet or broadcast. On the contrary, this underside of the counterinsurgency coin is calculated to exploit or create divisions among adversaries for the purpose of fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, US forces will pursue public legitimacy through conventional social welfare while simultaneously delegitimising local enemies by escalating intra-insurgent violence, knowing full-well that doing so will in turn escalate the number of innocent civilians \u201ccaught in the crossfire.\u201d The idea is that violence covertly calibrated by US special operations<\/a> will not only weaken enemies through in-fighting but turn the population against them.<\/p>\n

In this case, the \u2018enemy\u2019 consisted of jihadists, Ba\u2019athists, and peaceful Sufis, who were in a majority but, like the militants, also opposed the US military presence and therefore needed to be influenced. The JSOU report referred to events in late 2004 in Fallujah where \u201cUS psychological warfare (PSYOP) specialists\u201d undertook to \u201cset insurgents battling insurgents.\u201d This involved actually promoting Zarqawi\u2019s ideology, ironically, to defeat it: \u201cThe PSYOP warriors crafted programs to exploit Zarqawi\u2019s murderous activities \u2013 and to disseminate them through meetings, radio and television broadcasts, handouts, newspaper stories, political cartoons, and posters \u2013 thereby diminishing his folk-hero image,\u201d and encouraging the different factions to pick each other off. \u201cBy tapping into the Fallujans\u2019 revulsion and antagonism to the Zarqawi jihadis the Joint PSYOP Task Force did its \u2018best to foster a rift between Sunni groups.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as noted by Dahr Jamail, one of the few unembedded investigative reporters in Iraq after the war, the proliferation of propaganda linking the acceleration of suicide bombings to the persona of Zarqawi was not matched by meaningful evidence. His own search to substantiate the myriad claims attributing the insurgency to Zarqawi beyond anonymous US intelligence sources encountered only an \u201ceerie blankness\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US military operation in Fallujah, largely justified on the claim that Zarqawi\u2019s militant forces had occupied the city, used white phosphorous, cluster bombs, and indiscriminate air strikes to pulverise 36,000 of Fallujah\u2019s 50,000 homes, killing nearly a thousand civilians, terrorising 300,000 inhabitants to flee, and culminating in a disproportionate increase in birth defects, cancer and infant mortality due to the devastating environmental consequences of the war.<\/p>\n

To this day, Fallujah has suffered from being largely cut-off from wider Iraq, its infrastructure largely unworkable with water and sewage systems still in disrepair, and its citizens subject to sectarian discrimination and persecution by Iraqi government backed Shi\u2019a militia and police. \u201cThousands of bereaved and homeless Falluja families have a new reason to hate the US and its allies,\u201d observed The Guardian<\/a> in 2005. Thus, did the US occupation plant the seeds<\/a> from which Zarqawi\u2019s legacy would coalesce into the Frankenstein monster that calls itself \u201cthe Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bankrolling al-Qaeda in Syria<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas<\/a>, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: \u201cI was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business,\u201d he told French television: \u201cI met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor<\/a>, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials<\/a>, confirmed that as of 2011, US and UK special forces training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway. The goal was to elicit the \u201ccollapse\u201d of Assad\u2019s regime \u201cfrom within.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, the role of the Gulf states<\/a> \u2013 namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan (as well as NATO member Turkey) \u2013 in officially and unofficially financing<\/a> and coordinating the most virulent elements<\/a> amongst Syria\u2019s rebels under the tutelage of US military intelligence is no secret. Yet the conventional wisdom is that the funneling of support to Islamist extremists in the rebel movement affiliated to al-Qaeda has been a colossal and regrettable error.<\/p>\n

The reality is very different. The empowerment of the Islamist factions within the \u2018Free Syrian Army\u2019 (FSA) was a foregone conclusion of the strategy.<\/p>\n

In its drive to depose Col. Qaddafi in Libya, NATO had previously allied itself with rebels affiliated to the al-Qaeda faction, the Islamic Fighting Group. The resulting Libyan regime backed by the US was in turn liaising with FSA leaders<\/a> in Istanbul to provide money and heavy weapons for the anti-Assad insurgency. The State Department even hired an al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan militia group to provide security<\/a> for the US embassy in Benghazi \u2013 although they had links with the very people that attacked the embassy.<\/p>\n

Last year, CNN confirmed that CIA officials operating secretly out of the Benghazi embassy were being forced to take extra polygraph tests<\/a> to keep under wraps what US Congressman suspect was a covert operation \u201cto move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.\u201d<\/p>\n

With their command and control centre<\/a> based in Istanbul, Turkey, military supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular were transported by Turkish intelligence to the border for rebel acquisition. CIA operatives along with Israeli and Jordanian commandos<\/a> were also training FSA rebels on the Jordanian-Syrian border with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. In addition, other reports<\/a> show that British and French military were also involved in these secret training programmes. It appears that the same FSA rebels receiving this elite training went straight into ISIS \u2013 last month one ISIS commander, Abu Yusaf<\/a>, said, \u201cMany of the FSA people who the west has trained are actually joining us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National<\/a> thus confirmed the existence of another command and control centre in Amman, Jordan, \u201cstaffed by western and Arab military officials,\u201d which \u201cchannels vehicles, sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, small arms and ammunition to Free Syrian Army units.\u201d Rebel and opposition sources described the weapons bridge as \u201ca well-run operation staffed by high-ranking military officials from 14 countries, including the US, European nations and Arabian Gulf states, the latter providing the bulk of materiel and financial support to rebel factions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FSA sources interviewed by The National went to pains to deny that any al-Qaeda affiliated factions were involved in the control centre, or would receive any weapons support. But this is difficult to believe given that \u201cSaudi and Qatari-supplied weapons\u201d were being funneled through to the rebels via Amman, to their favoured factions.<\/p>\n

Classified assessments<\/a> of the military assistance supplied by US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar obtained by the New York Times showed that \u201cmost of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups\u2026 are going to hardline Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lest there be any doubt as to the extent to which all this covert military assistance coordinated by the US has gone to support al-Qaeda affiliated factions in the FSA, it is worth noting that earlier this year, the Israeli military intelligence website Debkafile<\/a> \u2013 run by two veteran correspondents who covered the Middle East for 23 years for The Economist \u2013 reported that: \u201cTurkey is giving Syrian rebel forces, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, passage through its territory to attack the northwestern Syrian coastal area around Latakia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August, Debkafile<\/a> reported that \u201cThe US, Jordan and Israel are quietly backing the mixed bag of some 30 Syrian rebel factions\u201d, some of which had just \u201cseized control of the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, the only transit point between Israeli and Syrian Golan.\u201d However, Debkafile noted, \u201cal-Qaeda elements have permeated all those factions.\u201d Israel has provided limited support to these rebels in the form of \u201cmedical care,\u201d as well as \u201carms, intelligence and food\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael acted as a member, along with the US and Jordan, of a support system for rebel groups fighting in southern Syria. Their efforts are coordinated through a war-room which the Pentagon established last year near Amman. The US, Jordanian and Israeli officers manning the facility determine in consultation which rebel factions are provided with reinforcements from the special training camps run for Syrian rebels in Jordan, and which will receive arms. All three governments understand perfectly that, notwithstanding all their precautions, some of their military assistance is bound to percolate to al-Qaeda\u2019s Syrian arm, Jabhat Al-Nusra, which is fighting in rebel ranks. Neither Washington or Jerusalem or Amman would be comfortable in admitting they are arming al-Qaeda\u2019s Nusra Front in southern Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

This support also went to ISIS. Although the latter was originally founded in Iraq in October 2006, by 2013 the group had significantly expanded its operations in Syria working alongside al-Qaeda\u2019s al-Nusra until February 2014, when ISIS was formally denounced by al-Qaeda. Even so, experts on the region\u2019s Islamist groups point out that the alleged rift<\/a> between al-Nusra and ISIS, while real, is not as fraught as one might hope, constituting a mere difference in tactics rather than fundamental ideology.<\/p>\n

Officially, the US government\u2019s financial support for the FSA goes through the Washington DC entity, the Syrian Support Group (SSG), Syrian Support Group (SSG)<\/a> which was incorporated in April 2012. The SSG is licensed via the US Treasury Department to \u201cexport, re-export, sell, or supply to the Free Syrian Army (\u2018FSA\u2019) financial, communications, logistical, and other services otherwise prohibited by Executive Order 13582 in order to support the FSA.\u201d<\/p>\n

In mid-2013, the Obama administration intensified its support to the rebels with a new classified executive order<\/a> reversing its previous policy limiting US direct support to only nonlethal equipment. As before, the order would aim to supply weapons strictly to \u201cmoderate\u201d forces in the FSA.<\/p>\n

Except the government\u2019s vetting procedures to block Islamist extremists from receiving US weapons have never worked.<\/p>\n

A year later, Mother Jones<\/a> found that the US government has \u201clittle oversight over whether US supplies are falling prey to corruption \u2013 or into the hands of extremists,\u201d and relies \u201con too much good faith.\u201d The US government keeps track of rebels receiving assistance purely through \u201chandwritten receipts provided by rebel commanders in the field,\u201d and the judgement of its allies. Countries supporting the rebels \u2013 the very same which have empowered al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists \u2013 \u201care doing audits of the delivery of lethal and nonlethal supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, with the Gulf states still calling the shots on the ground, it is no surprise that by September last year, eleven prominent rebel groups distanced themselves from the \u2018moderate\u2019 opposition leadership and allied themselves<\/a> with al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

By the SSG\u2019s own conservative estimate, as much as 15% of rebel fighters are Islamists affiliated to al-Qaeda, either through the Jabhut al-Nusra faction, or its breakaway group ISIS. But privately, Pentagon officials<\/a> estimate that \u201cmore than 50%\u201d of the FSA is comprised of Islamist extremists, and according to rebel sources neither FSA chief Gen Salim Idris nor his senior aides engage in much vetting, decisions about which are made typically by local commanders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Part 2 \u2013 THE LONG WAR<\/strong><\/p>\n

Follow the Money<\/strong><\/p>\n

Media reports following ISIS\u2019 conquest of much of northern and central Iraq this summer have painted the group as the world\u2019s most super-efficient, self-financed, terrorist organisation that has been able to consolidate itself exclusively through extensive looting of Iraq\u2019s banks and funds from black market oil sales. Much of this narrative, however, has derived from dubious sources, and overlooked disturbing details.<\/p>\n

One senior anonymous intelligence source told Guardian correspondent Martin Chulov<\/a>, for instance, that over 160 computer flash sticks obtained from an ISIS hideout revealed information on ISIS\u2019 finances that was completely new to the intelligence community.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875m [\u00a3515m],\u201d said the official on the funds obtained largely via \u201cmassive cashflows from the oilfields of eastern Syria, which it had commandeered in late 2012.\u201d Afterwards, \u201cwith the money they robbed from banks and the value of the military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5bn to that.\u201d The thrust of the narrative coming from intelligence sources was simple: \u201cThey had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don\u2019t need one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cISIS\u2019 half-a-billion-dollar bank heist makes it world\u2019s richest terror group,\u201d claimed the Telegraph, adding that the figure did not include additional stolen gold bullion, and millions more grabbed from banks \u201cacross the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story of ISIS\u2019 stupendous bank looting spree across Iraq made global headlines but turned out to be disinformation<\/a>. Senior Iraqi officials and bankers confirmed that banks in Iraq, including Mosul where ISIS supposedly stole $430 million, had faced no assault, remain open, and are guarded by their own private security forces.<\/p>\n

How did the story come about? One of its prime sources was Iraqi parliamentarian Ahmed Chalabi<\/a> \u2013 the same man who under the wing of his \u2018Iraqi National Congress\u2019 peddled false intelligence about Saddam\u2019s weapons of mass destruction<\/a> and ties to al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

In June, Chalabi met with the US ambassador to Iraq, Robert Beecroft, and Brett McGurk, the State Department\u2019s deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran. According to sources cited by Buzzfeed<\/a> in June, Beecroft \u201chas been meeting Chalabi for months and has dined at his mansion in Baghdad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow the Oil<\/strong><\/p>\n

But while ISIS has clearly obtained funding from donors in the Gulf states, many of its fighters having broken away from the more traditional al-Qaeda affiliated groups like Jabhut al-Nusra, it has also successfully leveraged its control over Syrian and Iraqi oil fields.<\/p>\n

In January, the New York Times<\/a> reported that \u201cIslamist rebels and extremist groups have seized control of most of Syria\u2019s oil and gas resources\u201d, bolstering \u201cthe fortunes of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and the Nusra Front, both of which are offshoots of al-Qaeda.\u201d Al-Qaeda affiliated rebels had \u201cseized control of the oil and gas fields scattered across the country\u2019s north and east,\u201d while more moderate \u201cWestern-backed rebel groups do not appear to be involved in the oil trade, in large part because they have not taken over any oil fields.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the west had directly aided these Islamist groups in their efforts to operationalise Syria\u2019s oil fields. In April 2013, for instance, the Times noted that al-Qaeda rebels had taken over key regions of Syria: \u201cNusra\u2019s hand is felt most strongly in Aleppo\u201d, where the al-Qaeda affiliate had established in coordination with other rebel groups including ISIS<\/a>\u00a0 \u201ca Shariah Commission\u201d running \u201ca police force and an Islamic court that hands down sentences that have included lashings.\u201d Al-Qaeda fighters also \u201ccontrol the power plant\u00a0and distribute flour to keep the city\u2019s bakeries running.\u201d Additionally, they \u201chave seized government oil fields\u201d in provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, and now make a \u201cprofit from the crude they produce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lost in the fog of media hype was the disconcerting fact that these al-Qaeda rebel bread and oil operations in Aleppo, Deir al-Zour and Hasaka were directly and indirectly supported by the US and the European Union (EU). One account by the Washington Post<\/a> for instance refers to a stealth mission in Aleppo \u201cto deliver food and other aid to needy Syrians \u2013 all of it paid for by the US government,\u201d including the supply of flour. \u201cThe bakery is fully supplied with flour paid for by the United States,\u201d the Post continues, noting that local consumers, however, \u201ccredited Jabhat al-Nusra \u2013 a rebel group the United States has designated a terrorist organisation because of its ties to al-Qaeda \u2013 with providing flour to the region, though he admitted he wasn\u2019t sure where it comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in the same month that al-Qaeda\u2019s control of Syria\u2019s main oil regions in Deir al-Zour and Hasaka was confirmed, the EU voted to ease an oil embargo<\/a> on Syria to allow oil to be sold on international markets from these very al-Qaeda controlled oil fields. European companies would be permitted to buy crude oil and petroleum products from these areas, although transactions would be approved by the Syrian National Coalition. Due to damaged infrastructure, oil would be trucked by road to Turkey where the nearest refineries are located.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe logical conclusion from this craziness is that Europe will be funding al-Qaeda,\u201d said Joshua Landis<\/a> , a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Just two months later, a former senior staffer at the Syria Support Group in DC, David Falt, leaked internal SSG emails<\/a> confirming that the group was \u201cobsessed\u201d with brokering \u201cjackpot\u201d oil deals on behalf of the FSA for Syria\u2019s rebel-run oil regions. \u201cThe idea they could raise hundreds of millions from the sale of the oil came to dominate the work of the SSG to the point no real attention was paid to the nature of the conflict,\u201d said Falt, referring in particular to SSG\u2019s director Brian Neill Sayers, who before his SSG role worked with NATO\u2019s Operations Division. Their aim was to raise money for the rebels by selling the rights to Syrian oil.<\/p>\n

Tacit Complicity in IS Oil Smuggling<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even as al-Qaeda fighters increasingly decide to join up with IS, the ad hoc black market oil production and export infrastructure established by the Islamist groups in Syria has continued to function with, it seems, the tacit support of regional and western powers.<\/p>\n

According to Ali Ediboglu<\/a>, a Turkish MP for the border province of Hatay, IS is selling the bulk of its oil from regions in Syria and Mosul in Iraq through Turkey, with the tacit consent of Turkish authorities: \u201cThey have laid pipes from villages near the Turkish border at Hatay. Similar pipes exist also at [the Turkish border regions of] Kilis, Urfa and Gaziantep. They transfer the oil to Turkey and parlay it into cash. They take the oil from the refineries at\u00a0zero cost. Using primitive means, they refine the oil in areas close to the Turkish border and then sell it via Turkey. This is worth $800 million.\u201d He also noted that the extent of this and related operations indicates official Turkish complicity. \u201cFighters from Europe, Russia, Asian countries and Chechnya are going in large numbers both to Syria and Iraq, crossing from Turkish territory. There is information that at least 1,000 Turkish nationals are helping those foreign fighters sneak into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) is allegedly involved. None of this can be happening without MIT\u2019s knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, there is evidence that authorities in the Kurdish region of Iraq are also turning a blind eye to IS oil smuggling. In July, Iraqi officials<\/a> said that IS had begun selling oil extracted from in the northern province of Salahuddin. One official pointed out that \u201cthe Kurdish peshmerga forces stopped the sale of oil at first, but later allowed tankers to transfer and sell oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

State of Law coalition MP Alia Nasseef also accused the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of secretly trading oil with IS: \u201cWhat is happening shows the extent of the massive conspiracy against Iraq by Kurdish politicians\u2026 The [illegal] sale of Iraqi oil to ISIS or anyone else is something that would not surprise us.\u201d Although Kurdish officials have roundly rejected these accusations, informed sources<\/a> told the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat that Iraqi crude captured by ISIS was \u201cbeing sold to Kurdish traders in the border regions straddling Iraq, Iran and Syria, and was being shipped to Pakistan where it was being sold \u2018for less than half its original price.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

An official statement<\/a> in August from Iraq\u2019s Oil Ministry warned that any oil not sanctioned by Baghdad could include crude smuggled illegally from IS: \u201cInternational purchasers [of crude oil] and other market participants should be aware that any oil exports made without the authorisation of the Ministry of Oil may contain crude oil originating from fields under the control of [ISIS].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCountries like Turkey have turned a blind eye to the practice\u201d of IS oil smuggling, said Luay al-Khateeb<\/a>, a fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, \u201cand international pressure should be mounted to close down black markets in its southern region.\u201d So far there has been no such pressure. Meanwhile, IS oil smuggling continues, with observers inside and outside Turkey<\/a> noting that the Turkish government is tacitly allowing IS to flourish as it prefers the rebels to the Assad regime.<\/p>\n

According to former Iraqi oil minister Isam al-Jalabi, \u201cTurkey is the biggest winner from the Islamic State\u2019s oil smuggling trade.\u201d Both traders and oil firms are involved, he said, with the low prices allowing for \u201cmassive\u201d profits for the countries facilitating the smuggling.<\/p>\n

Buying ISIS Oil?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early last month, a tanker carrying over a million barrels in crude oil from northern Iraq\u2019s Kurdish region arrived at the Texas Gulf of Mexico. The oil had been refined in the Iraqi Kurdish region before being pumped through a new pipeline from the KRG area ending up at Ceyhan, Turkey, where it was then loaded onto the tanker for shipping to the US. Baghdad\u2019s efforts to stop the oil sale on the basis of its having national jurisdiction were rebuffed by American courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In early September, the European Union\u2019s ambassador to Iraq, Jana Hyb\u00e1\u0161kov\u00e1, told the EU Foreign Affairs Committee<\/a> that \u201cseveral EU member states have bought oil from the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist organisation that has been brutally conquering large portions of Iraq and Syria,\u201d according to Israel National News. She however \u201crefused to divulge the names of the countries despite being asked numerous times.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third end-point for the KRG\u2019s crude this summer, once again shipped via Turkey\u2019s port of Ceyhan, was Israel\u2019s southwestern port of Ashkelon<\/a>. This is hardly news though. In May, Reuters<\/a> revealed that Israeli and US oil refineries had been regularly purchasing and importing KRG\u2019s disputed oil.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as this triangle of covert oil shipments in which ISIS crude appears to be hopelessly entangled becomes more established, Turkey has increasingly demanded that the US pursue formal measures to lift obstacles<\/a> to Kurdish oil sales to global markets. The KRG plans to export as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day by next year through its pipeline<\/a> to Turkey.<\/p>\n

Among the many oil and gas firms active in the KRG capital, Erbil, are ExxonMobil and Chevron. They are drilling in the region for oil under KRG contracts, though operations have been halted due to the crisis. No wonder Steve Coll writes in the New Yorker<\/a> that Obama\u2019s air strikes and arms supplies to the Kurds \u2013 notably not to Baghdad \u2013 effectively amount to \u201cthe defense of an undeclared Kurdish oil state whose sources of geopolitical appeal \u2013 as a long-term, non-Russian supplier of oil and gas to Europe, for example \u2013 are best not spoken of in polite or na\u00efve company.\u201d The Kurds are now busy working to \u201cquadruple\u201d their export capacity<\/a>, while US policy has increasingly shifted toward permitting Kurdish exports<\/a> \u2013 a development that would have major ramifications for Iraq\u2019s national territorial integrity.<\/p>\n

To be sure, as the offensive against IS ramps up, the Kurds are now selectively cracking down on IS smuggling efforts \u2013 but the measures are too little, too late.<\/p>\n

A New Map<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Third Iraq War has begun. With it, longstanding neocon dreams to partition Iraq into three along ethnic and religious lines have been resurrected.<\/p>\n

White House officials now estimate that the fight against the region\u2019s \u2018Islamic State\u2019 will last years<\/a>, and may outlive the Obama administration. But this \u2018long war\u2019 vision goes back to nebulous ideas formally presented by late RAND Corp analyst Laurent Muraweic before the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Policy Board<\/a> at the invitation of then chairman Richard Perle. That presentation described Iraq as a \u201ctactical pivot\u201d by which to transform the wider Middle East.<\/p>\n

Brian Whitaker, former Guardian Middle East editor<\/a>, rightly noted that the Perle-RAND strategy drew inspiration from a 1996 paper published by the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, co-authored by Perle and other neocons who held top positions in the post-9\/11 Bush administration.<\/p>\n

The policy paper advocated a strategy that bears startling resemblance to the chaos unfolding in the wake of the expansion of the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 \u2013 Israel would \u201cshape its strategic environment\u201d by first securing the removal of Saddam Hussein. \u201cJordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and \u2018roll back\u2019 Syria.\u201d This axis would attempt to weaken the influence of Lebanon, Syria and Iran by \u201cweaning\u201d off their Shi\u2019ite populations. To succeed, Israel would need to engender US support, which would be obtained by Benjamin Netanyahu formulating the strategy \u201cin language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2002 Perle-RAND plan was active in the Bush administration\u2019s strategic thinking on Iraq shortly before the 2003 war. According to US private intelligence firm Stratfor<\/a>, in late 2002, then vice-president Dick Cheney and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz had co-authored a scheme under which central Sunni-majority Iraq would join with Jordan; the northern Kurdish regions would become an autonomous state; all becoming separate from the southern Shi\u2019ite region.<\/p>\n

The strategic advantages of an Iraq partition, Stratfor argued, focused on US control of oil:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter eliminating Iraq as a sovereign state, there would be no fear that one day an anti-American government would come to power in Baghdad, as the capital would be in Amman [Jordan]. Current and potential US geopolitical foes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would be isolated from each other, with big chunks of land between them under control of the pro-US forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cEqually important, Washington would be able to justify its long-term and heavy military presence in the region as necessary for the defense of a young new state asking for US protection \u2013 and to secure the stability of oil markets and supplies. That in turn would help the United States gain direct control of Iraqi oil and replace Saudi oil in case of conflict with Riyadh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The expansion of the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 has provided a pretext for the fundamental contours of this scenario to unfold, with the US and British looking to re-establish a long-term military presence in Iraq.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Cheney\u2019s successor, Joe Biden, also indicated his support for the \u2018soft partition\u2019<\/a> of Iraq along ethno-religious lines \u2013 a position which the co-author of the Biden-Iraq plan, Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, now argues is \u201cthe only solution\u201d to the current crisis.<\/p>\n

In 2008, the strategy re-surfaced \u2013 once again via RAND Corp<\/a> \u2013 through a report funded by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command on how to prosecute the \u2018long war.\u2019 Among its strategies, one scenario advocated by the report was \u2018Divide and Rule\u2019 which would involve \u201cexploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, the report suggested that the US could foster conflict between Salafi-jihadists and Shi\u2019ite militants by \u201cshoring up the traditional Sunni regimes\u2026 as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way or another, the plan is in motion. Last week, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman<\/a> told US secretary of state John Kerry: \u201cIraq is breaking up before our eyes and it would appear that the creation of an independent Kurdish state is a foregone conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 is not just a direct consequence of this neocon vision, tied as it is to a dangerous covert operations strategy that has seen al-Qaeda linked terrorists as a tool to influence local populations \u2013 it has in turn offered a pretext for the launch of a new era of endless war, the spectre of a prolonged US-led military presence in the energy-rich Persian Gulf region, and a return to the dangerous imperial temptation to re-configure the wider regional order.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed isa member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He is director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development,<\/em> a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar who writes for <\/em>The Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises. He is the author of<\/em> A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It<\/a>, and the forthcoming science fiction thriller, <\/em>Zero Point<\/a>. The Sibel Edmonds memoirs, <\/em>Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story<\/a> is available from all good online booksellers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missing from the chorus of outrage has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence in directly sponsoring the Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, which broke away from al-Qaeda to form the Islamic State (IS).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}