Who Is Supplying Weapons And Recruits To The Islamic State From Abroad?

Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Jamie Dettmer, Daily Beast: Where ISIS Gets Its Bombs

How does the so-called Islamic State get new recruits and supplies from abroad? With amazing ease. An eyewitness report.

AKCAKALE, Turkey — Within sight of an unoccupied watchtower, and a couple of hundred meters from the border gate at Akcakale on the Syrian-Turkish border, two small girls are skipping on stacks of piping ready for shipment to the town of Tel Abyad, now controlled by the Islamic State, or ISIS, across what the Turks claim is a locked-down frontier.

It is the weekend and so in this slow-paced, dusty border town, decorated with multi-colored banners and pennants of Turkish political parties campaigning for next month’s parliamentary polls, no one is hurrying to transport the suspicious cargo. And so here the pipes, several meters long and three inches in diameter, remain.

Around the corner there are more pipes—larger ones, six inches in diameter. Smugglers say the piping can sustain high pressure and will be used by jihadists in Syria to manufacture pipe bombs, improvised explosive devices and launch-tubes for mortars.

The 35-year-old smuggler warns me not to get out of the car. The few men lounging around are watching us intently.

WNU Editor: What I find interesting about this post is the reporter's remark that Turkish border officials are more strict at border crossings where the Kurdish population lives .... while regions where the Islamic State flourishes .... not so strict. If true .... this tells me that the Turkish government has made the decision to at least "turn a blind eye" on what the Islamic State is doing with the exception of stopping Westerners who may want to join the Islamic State. But what is even more revealing is that even though Turkey is a NATO member state .... and all of this is happening with (I am willing to bet) under the watchful eyes of Western intelligence .... NATO governments are remaining quiet.