By Vestnik Kavkaza
Julian Assange, a founder of WikiLeaks, has made an “unmasking” statement, calling the group Islamic State a result of the adventurism of the West in the Middle East. However, today Washington is seeking allies in the struggle against the terrorist group. On April 14th Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi will talk to President Barack Obama in Washington. The President and the Premier will discuss a wide range of issues, including US support in the struggle against ISIS, the White House reports. Washington’s concerns are reasonable. Recently ISIS published a hit list of 100 American soldiers who have participated in military activities against the terrorist group in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
At the same time, ISIS is a direct threat to Russia. However, the director of the Caspian Cooperation Institute, political analyst Sergei Mikheyev, thinks that Moscow and Washington won’t build closer relations to find a common solution to the ISIS problem.
“I wouldn’t say that ISIS is an enemy of the West, and it has nothing in common with the activities of the group. There are many questions surrounding ISIS, and the West has no answers to them. The operation by the US and their allies in Iraq and their efforts in Syria have created a vacuum where ISIS has developed. The group is fighting with money and weapons which were stolen from the aid which was provided by the West to its allies.”
Mikheyev doubts the effectiveness of Washington’s struggle against ISIS: “They say that they cannot cope with ISIS; they are bombing their positions, and nothing changes. At the same time, they organize international conferences and discuss ways of cutting off financing of ISIS. It is ridiculous. The group is also getting money from “shadow” trade in oil products. Instead of bombing some positions in a desert, you should destroy oil refineries, terminals and fields! When the Americans invaded Iraq, they bombed the oilfields; everybody remembers videos with burning oil derricks. On the one hand the US is bombing ISIS positions, on the other hand, they let oil refineries work, and ISIS earn millions of dollars. Don’t they see where the refineries are situated? Don’t they realize how the money returns to ISIS, how oil is sold on the shadow markets?”
The expert remembers that “they decided to launch sanctions against Russia, they [Western countries - VK] invented a shot-down airplane and stood together. It was alright for them that there was no evidence in the case with the crashed plane. However, as for ISIS, they require international conferences and discussions of sources of ISIS financing.”
Mikheyev doesn’t believe in the sincerity of the West in its intention to fight ISIS; he suspects it of playing a double game: “There are a lot of shadow questions, and no direct answers. So we shouldn’t seriously hope that ISIS will become a topic which will make peace between us. We have already worked in Afghanistan, but it wasn’t a guarantee of preventing the developments in Ukraine. We helped the US in Afghanistan- they would have had more problems and losses there without us. But, at the time, they said that it was our common problem, as we were building closer cooperation. However, in a few years NATO declared Russia its main enemy again.”
