U.S. training helped mold top Islamic State military commander

KILLIS, Turkey The 15 Chechens looking to cross the border from Turkey to Syria didn’t strike Abdullah as particularly important or unusual.

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It was early summer in 2012, and as a smuggler based in the Turkish border town of Killis, Abdullah, who’d fled his home village in Syria because of fighting on the outskirts of Aleppo, was used to secretive groups of foreigners – journalists, aid workers and many recently aspiring jihadists – hiring him to cross Turkish military lines at the border while avoiding what was then still a significant Syrian government presence in northern Syrian. Abu Omar al Shishani, born Tarkhan Batirashvili in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley, is seen in an image captured from an Islamic State video posted on the Internet. The Pankisi Valley is home to perhaps as many as 150 Islamic State fighters. “In 2012, everyone was coming to Syria and we had too much work leading all kinds of people across the border,” he explained over lunch in Killis, a Turkish town just a few miles from the rebel-held Syrian city of Azzaz. “A lot were Muslims who had come to support the revolution against Bashar Assad from every country. So many from Europe, Russia, Germany, France. . . .” Read more here:

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