Rogue elements in CIA funding ISIL: US journalist

The United States and its allies, along with rogue elements in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are supporting and funding the ISIL terrorist group in Syria and Iraq, an American journalist in Phoenix says.

“Who’s funding ISIS (or ISIL), who’s supplying the main materials, we know Turkey is involved, we know Saudi Arabia is involved, we know Italy is involved and we also know that certain rogue elements in the CIA might be involved,” said Mike Harris, a financial editor at Veterans Today.

Observers say that while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, the organizations have been created to wreak havoc in Middle Eastern countries in order to "steal" their natural resources.

“This is asset-stripping and resource-stealing from the Iraqi people and from the Syrian people,” Harris told Press TV on Monday. “Every time a barrel of oil is stolen, somebody is transporting it, somebody is refining it, and some bank is processing the transactions.”

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria since late September without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

At least 32 ISIL members, including four of its leaders, were killed in a raid by US special forces that targeted the group in eastern Syria, a Britain-based monitoring group revealed on Sunday.

"The US operation killed 32 members of ISIL, among them four officials, including ISIL oil chief Abu Sayyaf, the deputy ISIL defense minister, and an ISIL communications official," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of spies inside Syria working for the foreign-backed Syrian opposition.

The operation was launched by US Special Operations forces in Deir ez-Zor province, without coordination with the Syrian government, on Friday night and continued into Saturday morning.

“It’s time for the US and the Syrian military to coordinate their actions in order to destroy ISIS,” Mike Harris said. “I would urge the US government to lift the sanctions against Syria and begin a coordinated and earnest effort to wipe ISIS out.”

AHT/HRJ

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