A Tajik fighter who received training in counterterrorism tactics in the United States, has defected to the Islamic State, the State Department has confirmed. Col. Gulmurod Khalimov is a former commander of the Tajik Special Police unit that was tasked with taking out crime syndicates and terror cells. Now Khalimov, who was vetted by the U.S. and Tajikistan governments, has joined the very type of terrorists he was trained to fight.
From 2003-2014 he participated in several US-funded training courses and his three trips to the US. The US mainstream media has made a big deal over Khalimov doing a JRTC rotation in Ft. Polk, but what you should really be concerned about is his US taxpayer-funded military education that includes Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) Courses on Crisis Response Teams, hostage negotiations, tactical command and tactical management of special events. He apparently also attended a course run by Blackwater/Xe/whatever they call themselves these days sometime in 2008. During this same stretch of time Khalimov participated in three crisis response exercises as recently as 2012 and has knowledge of the US Embassy in Dushanbe regarding security features and response protocols. Hopefully the US State Department (DoS) has revised those TTPs, but common sense has never been their strong suit.
It is believed that Khalimov’s counterterrorism experience will give him a major advantage against U.S. forces.
“The real problem is he knows how to plan counterterrorism operations, so he knows how the people who protect the high value target will be thinking. He knows how the people who protect an embassy will be thinking,” Michael Breen, former Army intelligence officer and now-executive director of the Truman National Security Project, told CNN. “That puts him in a position, as we say in the military, to ‘red team’ that, to think very intelligently about how to disrupt those plans. That’s a dangerous capability.”
In a video announcing his defection,Khalimov, clad in the black garb of the Islamic State, indicated that he will serve as an OPs planner for ISIS operations targeting America and Russia.
Khalimov claimed to have joined the Islamic State because of what he saw during his training sessions.
“Listen, you American pigs: I’ve been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims,” he said in Russian, . “You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims.”
Looking directly into the camera, Khalimov threatened, “God willing, we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”
Video via CNN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7wa0oQPM8
The ISIS study group predicts “we’re probably going to hear a lot more about this guy.”
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