ISIS fighter was trained by State Department
By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd, CNNUpdated 8:30 PM ET, Fri May 29, 2015
Washington (CNN) An ISIS fighter who calls for jihad in a new online video was trained in counterterrorism tactics on American soil, in a program run by the United States, officials tell CNN.
The video features a former police commander from Tajikistan named Col. Gulmurod Khalimov. He appears in black ISIS garb with a sniper rifle and a bandolier of ammunition. He says in the video that he participated in programs on U.S. soil three times, at least one of which was in Louisiana.
The State Department has confirmed this claim.
"From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State's Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program," said spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala.
The program is intended to train candidates from participating countries in the latest counterterrorism tactics, so they can fight the very kind of militants that Khalimov has now joined.
A State Department official said Khalimov was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and related issues.
In the video, Khalimov says that what he saw during his training sessions turned him against his sponsors.
"Listen, you American pigs: I've been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims," he says in Russian. "You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims."
Then, in the most chilling part of the 10-minute video, he looks directly into the camera and says, "God willing, we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you."
He then demonstrates his dexterity with a sniper rifle by blowing apart a tomato from a distance of perhaps 25 yards. The scene is played in slow motion.
The American program in which Khalimov participated is designed to teach tactics used by police and military units against terrorists by countries that cooperate with the United States on security matters. But now experts are concerned that this defector has brought ISIS not only a propaganda victory, but also an insider's knowledge of the playbook the United States is using in the fight against ISIS.
"That is a dangerous capability," said former Army intelligence officer Michael Breen. "It's never a good thing to have senior counterterrorism people become terrorists."
"It sounds like he was involved in defending sensitive people and sensitive targets," said Breen, who is now with the Truman Project in Washington. "He knows how to plan counterterrorism operations. So he knows how the people who protect a high-value target will be thinking; he knows how people who protect an embassy would be thinking."
Former Army sniper Paul Scharre, now with the Center for a New American Security, said Khalimov could not only help train other ISIS fighters in tactics, but also serve as a recruiter for the group.
"They're obviously trying to draw in recruits" with the video, he said.
Khalimov was an officer of the primary counterterrorism unit which responds to terrorist threats in Tajikistan, a State Department official said, so he and other members of his unit were recommended for the program by the Tajik government.
"All appropriate Leahy vetting was undertaken in advance of this training," said spokeswoman Jhunjhunwala.
Scharre, who has served as a trainer of Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan, says there is always a risk that a trainee will turn against their American instructors.
But Breen, who has also participated in training sessions overseas, said building counterterrorism partners requires a necessary leap of faith. "There's absolutely no way to beat an opponent like the Islamic State, without training a lot of people," he said. "That's a core of our strategy."
CNN's Elise Labott and Bruce Conover contributed to this report
U.S.-TRAINED COMMANDER OF TAJIK POLICE DEFECTS TO ISIS
by JOHN HAYWARD29 May 20150Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, trained by both Russian and American special forces to head up the elite OMON police force of Tajikistan, has defected to the Islamic State.
He disappeared in April after he “told his wife he was going on a business trip,” but he appeared on Wednesday in an ISIS video, vowing to bring jihad and “slaughter” to the caliphate’s adversaries.
It’s not clear where the video was recorded, although the BBC theorizes it might have been shot at a Syrian camp. Khalimov, sporting a black turban and cradling a sniper rifle, is flanked by several other Islamic State fighters.
“Listen, you dogs, the president and ministers, if only you knew how many boys, our brothers are here, waiting and yearning to return to Tajikistan to re-establish sharia law there,” Khalimov snarled in Russian at his own country’s government in the video, accusing them of becoming “the slaves of infidels.”
“We are coming to you with slaughter, inshallah, we are coming to you with slaughter,” he promised, using the Islamic phrase for “as God wills.” Jihad Watch notes, as few mainstream media outlets appear willing to do, that Khalimov is paraphrasing Mohammed’s address to his enemies, the Quraysh, as recorded in Islamic texts.
His threat to the United States was an original composition, however. “Listen, you American pigs, I’ve been three times to America, and I saw how you train fighters to kill Muslims,” Khalimov said, brandishing his rifle. “God willing, I will come with this weapon to your cities, your homes, and we will kill you.”
The UK Telegraph notes Khalimov is considered an expert marksman, “and at the end of the 12-minute video he shows off his skills by shooting a tomato.”
Khalimov’s defection will put a disturbing amount of top-shelf Russian and American military training at the disposal of ISIS, along with useful intelligence gathered during the former security chief’s years of working with NATO. It is a troubling sign of the Islamic State’s expanding reach through Afghanistan into neighboring Central Asian states like Tajikistan.
It also hands an ugly public-realtions win to ISIS, as Central Asia analyst Alexander Knyazev told Reuters. “I think Islamist propaganda will now exploit Khalimov’s example in full,” he warned, voicing particular concerns about Islamist instability in Tajikistan’s neighbor Kyrgyzstan.
The Telegraph relates estimates that some 4,000 men from Central Asia have joined the jihad, up to 2,000 of them from Tajikistan. There are up to a million Tajik nationals living and working in Russia, making the possibility of widespread radicalization a major security headache there.
The New York Times quotes Aleksei V. Malashenko of the Carnegie Center in Moscow saying of Khalimov’s defection, “I am afraid that he may open a path for people to follow him.”
The Times notes that “poverty is often cited as a factor in the radicalization of Islamic State recruits, but Mr. Khalimov’s case pointed instead to a different driver: a repressed but growing religiosity among Tajiks of all classes, including the elite.” Experts are cited warning of “substantial support for imposing sharia, the legal code of Islam based on the Quran, and for the idea of a caliphate.”
