Islamic State relies on Obama's 'moderate' rebels for weaponry purchases

Islamic State relies on Obama's 'moderate' rebels for weaponry purchases. (RT).

The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) is an enigma: most of what we know about it comes from the brutal media apparatus of the IS itself. It lets everyone see executions and war the terrorists are waging – but still, how does life go under jihadist rule? One man decided to find out for himself, spending 10 days in the ‘capital city’ of the IS and coming back alive. Today, investigative journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer tells his story to Sophie Shevardnadze.

Sophie Shevardnadze: Jürgen Todenhöfer, the investigative journalist who went inside the territory of Islamic State – welcome to this show, it’s great to have you with us. Now, recent events have seen several ISIS’ defeats, when the group moved into Shia or non-Arab territory, it was actually repelled. The Kurds score victories against them, the Shias, the Iraqi army – has the ISIS threat passed, in your opinion?

Jürgen Todenhöfer: The situation hasn’t substantially changed since December, and if the Americans or NATO are saying that IS lost 25% of the territory – this is just not true. This is not the truth. Maybe, they have lost between 5 or 10%, but this doesn’t play any role in the guerilla war, when people are moving.

SS: So, just to make sure – in your opinion, ISIS is as strong as ever?

JD: Yeah, it’s the same. Nothing has changed substantially, unfortunately, I would say.

SS: Talking about cultivating terrorists, you also say that the Syrian rebels U.S. supported are the same terrorists the U.S. is now fighting. How did that happen, and does Washington realize that?

JD: I think that the knowledge of Europe and of the Americans about the Middle East is very small. You criticized me, and I spent, every year during 50 years, my free time in the Middle East, and I know a little bit about the Middle East. Americans don’t know anything. They thought if they would attack Saddam Hussein there will be democracy in the Middle East – and what do we have now? Chaos in the whole Middle East, and we are surprised that in this chaos we now chaotic people, terrorists, like IS.

So, I give you another example: the U.S. are supporting the FSA, these are rebels financed by Western countries. But these FSA fighters sell their ammunition to IS. The IS fighters told me: “we need them! We get almost all our ammunition from the FSA, and we also get weapons from FSA, and we get weapons from Kurds, and we hope that you will send a lot of weapons to the Kurds because we can, in the end, buy them on the market.”

I saw German machineguns, I saw them myself. It’s a complete mess. I personally think, the only solution in the Middle East is that the Western countries should withdraw their troops from the Middle East, and their bases from the Middle East. We have nothing to do there. We don’t have bases in China, we don’t have bases in India, and we don’t need bases in the Middle East.

It’s not our country, it’s the country of Muslims, them and Christians over there, but not of our countries. It’s a big mistake to think that the Middle East is our, our personal garden, where we can go whenever we want. Hmmm.....Not to mention all the 'weapons' delivered by 'Islamist' Turkey. Read the full story here.