The US military, working at the base of Et-Tanf in Syria, are actively interacting with the Islamic State terrorist group* (ISIS, banned in the Russian Federation) and consider themselves masters of the land on which they are located.
This was reported to Russian journalists by the former commander of a group of militants who fled from Al-Tanf and switched to the side of the Syrian army, Abu Hamzi.
“The Americans believe that this is their land. They are like kings there. Captain Mike, they are all the same there <…>. They collaborate with IS fighters. They worked with IS members, <…> they still train them and work with them”, – Abu Hamzi said.
Captain Mike, whom he mentioned, was his instructor. Abu Hamzi speaks well of him because the American was “constantly cheerful”. In addition, according to the fugitive, the instructor “knows nothing” about what kind of application the US curators found for the militants, “he only knows how to use weapons” and teaches how to handle them. In particular, the captain dedicated the Syrian in the intricacies of working with American machine guns of the 40th and 50th calibers.
Abu Hamzi also said that his instructor was driving a Hummer, while the militants supplied the Toyota Land Cruiser with pickups. Moreover, if models with 6-cylinder engines were delivered earlier, now they are with 8-cylinder ones. Such vehicles are far from all; they are only issued to oporno commanders. The commander himself must be in the front passenger seat, and there is security at the back.
Earlier, a group of extremists trained at a US military base in Al-Tanf on the border with Jordan fled and surrendered to Syrian government forces. Then, under cover of night, the whole unit abandoned the strong point at which it served. The militants plunged into pickups and took weapons and provisions with them. During the transition to the side of the regular army, they were attacked by US-controlled radicals and lost three cars. 27 people managed to escape. American instructors trained the fugitives to carry out sabotage at oil and gas and transport facilities, as well as terrorist acts in the territory controlled by the Syrian authorities.