Skip to content

Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2022

Did the US support rebel groups that later formed ISIS?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
yes

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began as an offshoot of the Islamist group al-Qaida, which formed to oppose the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S., then engaged in the Cold War, funnelled weapons and money to al-Qaida to aid its opposition. The Soviets were eventually driven out of Afghanistan and the sharia-based Taliban regime was established. Al-Qaida went on to commit acts of terrorism against the U.S., including 9/11.

More recently, the U.S. armed Syrian rebel groups fighting against the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War. One of these groups, al-Qaida in Iraq, later combined with other Islamist groups to form ISIS. A 2017 study from weapons tracker Conflict Armament Research found ISIS possessed "significant quantities" of U.S.-supplied weapons and ammunition.

While U.S.-backed efforts beginning in 2014 reclaimed all ISIS-controlled territory, the group remains active in the Middle East.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.