Late last year, Germany’s broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) investigated what turned out to be hundreds of trucks a day carrying billions of dollars in supplies, flowing across the Turkish border into Syria and directly into the hands of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).

The border crossing near the Turkish city of Oncupinar, approximately 100km west of the Syrian city of Kobani, is apparently only one of many such crossings where ISIS fighters, weapons, and materiel move directly under the watch and apparent assistance of NATO.

TIME in their recent article titled, “ISIS Fighters Kill 200 Civilians in Syrian Town,” reported that:

The attacks also came after the group [ISIS] suffered a series of setbacks over the past two weeks, including the loss last week of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad — one of the group’s main points for bringing in foreign fighters and supplies.

Tal Abyad, a Turkish-Syrian border crossing east of Kobani, is now a second, confirmed point of entry into Syria used by ISIS to supply its ongoing campaign within the country.

Reports of confirmed, extensive logistical networks passing through NATO and US-ally territory, into Syria, contradict the current prevailing narrative that ISIS is an “indigenous” terrorist organization, funded and self-sustaining within the territory it currently holds in both Syria and Iraq. The Western media has attempted to claim with little evidence that ISIS’ immense, global operations are somehow underwritten by “ransom payments” and “black market oil” it has seized in eastern Syria.

Clearly, not only are these reports as untenable as they are untrue, the Western media itself has reported precisely how ISIS has been sustaining its impressive fighting capacity – with billions of dollars of state-sponsored aid flowing through NATO territory, directly to their front lines.

Were the supplies flowing over the Syrian-Iraqi border, it may be possible to argue plausible deniability – with the governments of either nation unable to control either side of the border. However, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and host of the United States Air Force’s Incirlik Air Base, has full control of its borders meaning that ISIS-bound convoys not only pass over its borders with the apparent approval of Turkish border guards, but are assembled somewhere within Turkey itself before arriving at the edge of Syrian territory.

No effort has been made to stem the flow of supplies to ISIS from NATO territory, with the Turkish government officially denying the trucks DW videotaped and reported on even exist. This indicates clear NATO complicity in the arming and supplying of ISIS and other Al Qaeda affiliates who are in fact invading Syria from NATO-territory, as well as from US-ally Jordan.

For the West, which feigns indignation in the wake of recent ISIS attacks on France, Tunisia, and Kuwait, while posing as the primary force engaged in war with ISIS directly, it would be a simple matter to close the Turkish-Syrian border with NATO troops to ensure ISIS was shut off completely from the supplies it depends on to maintain its fighting capacity. That the borders are intentionally left open for this extensive daily torrent of supplies, weapons, and fighters to pass over unopposed, is proof positive that ISIS is and has been from the beginning a proxy force intentionally created to stoke fear and support at home for unending war abroad.

Without the threat of ISIS and the chaos it is creating across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the ability for the West to wage war on its enemies and justify extraterritorial meddling would be severely limited. In fact, the very ISIS forces clearly being armed and supplied by NATO directly, are being used as a pretext by US policymakers to execute recently laid plans to incrementally invade and occupy Syria with US military forces.

The Brookings Institute from which these plans originated, recently used an ISIS assault on Kobani to call for “US boots on the ground” in Syria, an assault which would have been logistically impossible were it not for the daily torrent of supplies the US and its NATO-ally Turkey have themselves intentionally enabled for years to cross into Syria.

To defeat ISIS, its supply lines must be cut – a simple matter to perform that requires only Turkish and other NATO troops to move in and disrupt overt ISIS logistical networks running within their own territory. Instead, the US State Department and US-operated NGOs have even gone as far as condemning what little attempts have been made to control Turkey’s border with Syria. The US State Department’s Voice of America in their article, “Turkish Border Crackdown Imperils Syrian Refugees,” used the pretext of “human rights” to condemn Turkey for what meager control measures it has attempted to put in place.

The fact that the US, with a military base in Turkey itself, has elected not to call for or attempt to implement stricter border security to stem the flow of ISIS supplies, and instead has gone as far as bombing Syrian territory in feigned efforts to “fight ISIS,” proves that the terrorist organization is both a proxy and a pretext. No serious military campaign would be launched against an enemy without identifying and cutting off its supply lines, especially when those supply lines run through that military’s own territory.

The general public across the West, if they truly desire an end to ISIS and its atrocities, will demand what least the West can do – shutting the borders of Turkey and Jordan and ending the flow of supplies to ISIS. This will never happen, thanks to both elementary but effective “divide and conquer” rhetoric miring the Western public in endless circular debate, and the fact that the average Westerner’s understanding of modern warfare and military logistics is derived from Hollywood and television, not maps, history, and basic knowledge.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.