Guest Post by Claire Bernish
(ANTIMEDIA) Middle East — If you’ve ever stumbled across genuine Islamic State propaganda videos or photos and their loose resemblance to car commercials — albeit with a notably dystopic terror-cult tinge — you probably quizzically crinkled your brow. But after time spent perusing more oddly indistinguishable ISIS propaganda than you’d care to remember, that crinkled brow surely crystallized into veritable folklore:
Where did ISIS get all those new Toyota trucks?!
Now, at long last, U.S. counterterrorism officials have commenced an ostensibly earnest attempt to answer that open question — by asking Toyota how, exactly, ISIS came to possess such an impressive array of its late-model pick-ups and SUVs.
In response, Toyota claims to have no idea how it happened — partly because tracking vehicle sales won’t necessarily catch middlemen or wholesalers with terrorist ties.
And after all, the company maintains a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities,” according to Ed Lewis, Toyota’s director of public policy and communications in Washington, as reported by ABC News. “We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity.”
Lewis’ reference to “Treasury” is Toyota’s pledge to “support” an inquiry by the U.S. Treasury Department’s rather problematically-monikered Terror Financing Unit — which is one ostensible arm of a purposefully nonspecific “effort” to somehow prevent ISIS from acquiring Western stuff.
“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” beseeched Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., Lukman Faily. “How could these brand new trucks . . . these four-wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”
Toyota’s Land Cruisers and its overseas version of the Tacoma — the dubious Hilux — have become a notoriously iconic feature of ISIS.
Continue reading “How the US Became a Toyota Dealer for ISIS”
