The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the Islamic State’s use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming and funding the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.
In the ABC’s article U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs that can be seen in the various propaganda videos of this terrorist organisation. Toyota, however, says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and it has a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities.”
“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors. How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them – where are they coming from?” said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, for the ABC News.
It appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong people. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury should have asked questions at the US State Department. Because last year it was reported that the US State Department has been sending in fleets of Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to the “Free Syrian Army.”
Public Radio International reported in a 2014 article that: “Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.”
Also, The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels, reported that: So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.
The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted this, but their military forces and intelligence agencies are at the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria.
What mystery?
Of course, much of this is not something new. So the question is – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this inquiry? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking question of how ISIS has managed to create such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.
Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria out of thin air. They were brought in Syria in great numbers, with the knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy has become.