New ISIS Military Commander Was Trained by State Department as Recently as 2014

Gulmurod Khalimov, the new ISIS military commander whom the U.S. just days ago announced a $3 million bounty for, was trained by the State Department in an anti-terror program as recently as 2014 while serving in the security service of Tajikistan.

He replaces former ISIS commander Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Umar al-Shishani, who was also trained by the United States as part of the Georgian army and who ISIS claimed was killed fighting in Iraq this past July.

The State Department confirmed Khalimov's U.S.-provided training to CNN in May 2015:

"From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State's Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program," said spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala.

The program is intended to train candidates from participating countries in the latest counterterrorism tactics, so they can fight the very kind of militants that Khalimov has now joined.

A State Department official said Khalimov was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and related issues.

Unironically, the State Department spokeswoman said that Khalimov had been appropriately vetted:

"All appropriate Leahy vetting was undertaken in advance of this training," said spokeswoman Jhunjhunwala.

"Listen, you American pigs: I've been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims," he says.

Then, he threatens, "we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you."

Khalimov and Batirashvili are hardly the first terrorist leaders operating in Syria to have been trained by the United States.

In August 2014, the Washington Post reported that fighters who had been trained by Western forces, including the U.S., in Libya had found their way to terror groups at the beginning of the Syrian conflict:

Some European and Arab intelligence officials also voiced their worries and frustration about what they call the mistakes the United States has made in handling the uprisings in Arab states. “We had, in the early stages, information that radical groups had used the vacuum of the Arab Spring, and that some of the people the U.S. and their allies had trained to fight for ‘democracy’ in Libya and Syria had a jihadist agenda — already or later, [when they] joined al Nusra or the Islamic State,” a senior Arab intelligence official said in a recent interview. He said that often his U.S. counterparts would say things like, “We know you are right, but our president in Washington and his advisers don’t believe that.” Those groups, say Western security officials, are threats not only in the Middle East, but also in the United States and Europe, where they have members and sympathizers.

The official’s account has been corroborated by members of the Islamic State in and outside the Middle East, including Abu Yusaf, the military commander. In several interviews conducted in the last two months, they described how the collapse of security during Arab Spring uprisings helped them recruit, regroup and use the Western strategy — to support and train groups that fight dictators — for their own benefits. “There had [also] been … some British and Americans who had trained us during the Arab Spring times in Libya,” said a man who calls himself Abu Saleh and who only agreed to be interviewed if his real identity remained secret.

Abu Saleh, who is originally from a town close to Benghazi, said he and a group of other Libyans received training and support in their country from French, British, and American military and intelligence personnel — before they joined the Al Nusra Front or the Islamic State. Western and Arab military sources interviewed for this article, confirmed Abu Saleh’s account that “training” and “equipment” were given to rebels in Libya during the fight against the Gadhafi regime.

Abu Saleh left Libya in 2012 for Turkey and then crossed into Syria. “First I fought under what people call the ‘Free Syrian Army’ but then switched to Al Nusra. And I have already decided I will join the Islamic State when my wounds are healed,” the 28-year-old said from a hospital in Turkey, where he is receiving medical treatment. He had been injured during a battle with the Syrian Army, he said, and was brought to Turkey with false documents. “Some of the Syrian people who they trained have joined the Islamic State and others jabhat al Nusra,” he said, smiling. He added, “Sometimes I joke around and say that I am a fighter made by America.”

This problem of a terror "boomerang" also goes back to the Bush administration, as seen when Islamist rebels took over a large portion of Mali in 2013.

Some people think ISIS was accidently spawned by US policy.

I say it was directly spawned, purposely so, by US policy. They were created for a purpose, and have largely fulfilled that purpose. Had it not been for the really, really bad PR they got from slaughtering Christians and filming it, Obama and company would be taking credit for them, and proudly so.

As it is, they have been forced to deny any relationship, to pretend to fight them, and finally to actually fight them in some cases.

That doesn’t change the fact that they were a Turkish/Saudi/State Department operation from the beginning.

My view. Yours may vary.

My view is that our policy is incoherent.

Under Bush we prepared for war against Iran, along with our allies. Hence we built a ring of bases and basing agreements around Iran on all sides. Afghanistan and Iraq, obviously, on the Persian Gulf side with the Saudis and all the emirates, and even on the north with Azerbaijan and the Kazakhs.

With this in mind, if you were preparing for war against Iran, it made sense to take down Assad as he was their only ally at the time. Russia wasn’t really in the picture, in fact when Bush was in office Russia was helping us.

Taking out Assad closed Iran’s window to the Mediterranean and left them isolated.

Someone had the bright idea that a good way to handle Al Qaeda was to re-direct them against our enemies. So they sent them against Khadafi, and then turned them loose on Assad. A Turkish general directed the war against Assad and Turkey was the safe rear zone for the “Syrian rebels” who self-identified as Al Qaeda (but are always referred to in the US press as “the rebels”).

We armed them, a lot of them were trained in Qatar by our guys. We stockpiled enormous quantities of weapons and vehicles in western Iraq, and when they broke out and grabbed it (our guys were withdrawn and the stuff was left undefended) the group now re-labeled as “ISIS” became the best armed army in the region after Turkey. By seizing western Iraq they formed a physical barrier between Iran and Syria. They also in one move achieved the partition of Iraq that a lot of people had called for but which was politically impossible.

It would have been a brilliant chess move had it not been for the whole head-chopping business. Another president might have told all involved, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Turks, the Saudis, that we expected them to protect every hair on the heads of every Christian in the region if they expected to continue receiving our support, and that if they did not we would turn them into charcoal. But our president and State Department never did that, the Turks certainly weren’t interested in defending minorities. The Saudis seem to have been more sensitive to the bad publicity well before even our State Department and were back-pedaling early on.

You will notice that even now, Turkey is ISIS’s safe rear zone, its where they take their wounded. Turkey’s president’s son markets ISIS’s oil.

Now, where does it all become incoherent? What is the point of isolating Iran, taking out Assad and occupying western Iraq, if you are going to give them nukes? And make no mistake, our treaty with Iran does the precise opposite of what it is purported to do, it shelters, defends, and bankrolls Iran’s nuclear project. And of course we have opened the door for Russia to get into the mix which further renders our policy incoherent.

So thanks to us and the Turks, genocide is underway. Syrian Christians do not qualify as refugees in the US under State Department rules, only muslims who oppose Assad qualify... which would include people who support the “rebels”, the self-identified Al Qaeda militias. They qualify. Christian do not since they are being killed by non-government entities ie ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Of course you have geniuses who want to shoot down Russian planes which both Turkey and the “rebels” have already done.

Anyway, since ISIS has become such an embarrassment, we have been forced to pretend to fight them to solve the PR problem. But we are ever so careful not to actually defeat them.

Notice that Trump talks about killing ISIS and most of the other candidates were threatening to shoot down Russians. Incoherent.

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