US funded the creation of ISIS, says Hardeep Singh Puri at JLF 2017
On the second day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2017, senior diplomat, Hardeep Singh Puri, author of Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos, said he had reasons to believe that the US funded the ISIS during the Iraq War.
Senior diplomat, Hardeep Singh Puri, author of Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos said he had reasons to believe that the US funded the ISIS during the Iraq War, with certain officials from the American government going on record that they had funded and trained the organisation during the troubled times as a ‘moderate force’ against the civil unrest.
“(The US) actually funded the creation of this hydra headed monster, ISIS, and there is evidence for that. The new national security adviser on the Trump administration, which will get inaugurated today, Michael Flynn, I have him on record in my book,” said Puri who served as the Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013.
“He said the creation of ISIS was a willful act in order to get over Assad... Well, he said it. Biden said the same thing. Somebody funded a moderate opposition... When they found that the moderates they had funded and trained, had crossed across to the other side, they ended the programme,” he added.
However, Emma Sky, author and academician, and other panellists expressed her disbelief at the statement though they conceded that the Iraq War had left a vacuum and a ripe political landscape for the ISIS to gain power; a ‘folly’ on the part of the US. “Folly is too mild a word for ISIS. In my book I call ISIS ‘the unwanted child of a neglected occupation;’ I should have also said ‘an incompetent occupation,” said Puri.
Sky however, said that such theories stem from a belief in the absolute power of the US. “There is a common narrative in the Middle that America controls everything. America put a man on the moon, therefore everything that happens is controlled by America. That dominant narrative is not based on fact,” she said.
Puri and Sky were speaking at a session that included other panelists like Robert F Wroth, a journalist and former New York Times bureau chief in Beirut, and journalist Jonathan Shainin.
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