The image is not proof that Israeli and US intelligence agencies created the Islamist group. The original photo shows the soldiers holding a green and yellow flag – not the black and white flag of Isis.
MARY ALEXANDER • 20 March 2024
“ISIS was created and funded by Mossad and the CIA,” reads the caption of an image circulating on social media in Nigeria, South Africa and elsewhere.
It adds: “Israel treated ISIS fighters in their hospitals and John McCain met with their leader and supplied weapons.”
The image shows a row of smiling soldiers holding the black and white flag of Isis, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, next to the blue and white flag of Israel.
Mossad is the foreign intelligence agency of Israel, a country in the Middle East. The CIA is the US Central Intelligence Agency.
John McCain was a US senator and the Republican Party presidential candidate who lost to Barack Obama in 2008. He died in 2018.
What is Isis?
Isis is a militant Sunni Islamist group that captured and held large parts of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in the Middle East from 2014 to 2019. The group’s previous name was the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or Isil. It’s also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, or simply as the Islamic State.
At its height, the Islamic State controlled a self-declared caliphate of roughly 4,400 square kilometres, a region of about 8 million people.
In 2015 the International Criminal Court said it was investigating “crimes of unspeakable cruelty” by the Islamic State. These included:
… mass executions, sexual slavery, rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, torture, mutilation, enlistment and forced recruitment of children and the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities …
The Islamic State has been linked to deadly attacks in Nigeria, Benin, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. It has also claimed responsibility for attacks in more than 20 other countries across the world.
Most recently, an Islamic State group based in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for a 22 February attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia’s capital. At least 133 people have so far been reported to have been killed.
But is the image any proof that Isis was “created and funded by Mossad and the CIA”?
US-led African Lion military training in Morocco
A reverse image search reveals that the image has been altered.
In the original photo, the soldiers are holding a green and yellow flag – not the Isis flag – next to the Israeli flag.
The photo appears in news reports on troops from an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) battalion joining the US Africa Command’s African Lion military training exercise in Morocco in June 2023.
Its caption on the Times of Israel reads: “An IDF contingent of soldiers from the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion in Morocco to take part in the US-led African Lion military exercises on June 5, 2023.”
The photo was also posted on the IDF’s official X/Twitter account on 5 June 2023.
משלחת של 12 לוחמים ומפקדים מיחידת סיירת גולני יצאה אתמול לתרגיל “African Lion 2023” בהובלת זרוע היבשה שמתקיים במרוקו.
בתרגיל משתתפות כ-18 מדינות וכ-8,000 חיילים מצבא ארה”ב, מרוקו וגאנה >> pic.twitter.com/4SDKbAcAJl
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) June 5, 2023
A machine translation of the post’s Hebrew text reads:
A delegation of 12 fighters and commanders from the Golani patrol unit left yesterday for the ‘African Lion 2023’ exercise … that is taking place in Morocco. About 18 countries and about 8,000 soldiers from the US army, Morocco and Ghana are participating in the exercise.
The altered image is not proof that Mossad created and funded Isis.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Report published by Africa Check on 28 March 2024