The United States has created favorable grounds for the growth of terrorist groups like ISIL in the Middle East despite claiming to fight extremism in the region, an American investigative journalist says.
“The United States has been rather on two sides of this issue,” said Wayne Madsen, who is also an author specializing in international affairs.
“They claim they’re fighting ISIL but the US-Saudi [Arabia] relationship and the US relationship with Qatar indicates that there’s been no action by the Americans to curtail those two countries support for these Salafists acting in Syria and Iraq,” Madsen said during a phone interview with Press TV on Friday.
“There’s been more than ample number of reports that the US has airdropped supplies to ISIL forces in northern Iraq, has helped the so-called Free Syrian Army rebels in Syria that turned out to be groups affiliated, if not members of ISIL,” he added.
Observers say that while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to wreak havoc in Muslim countries.
The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.
Madsen said Ankara’s decision to allow the United States to use Turkish soil to launch air attacks against ISIL is a gesture “to take the Turkish military heat off of” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The decision to allow American warplanes to use the Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey signals a major shift in foreign policy by Erdogan, US officials said Thursday.
Washington and Ankara agreed earlier this week to work jointly in a declared attempt to tighten security along Turkey’s border with Syria, aimed at controlling the movement of ISIL militants in the region.
The White House said in a statement that US President Barack Obama and his Turkish counterpart had reached the agreement on Wednesday.