Why Toyota Hilux is Popular Amongst Boko Haram & ISIS

Have you noticed that whenever jihadist groups like ISIS or Boko Haram release video or still images, they have a brand of car they always use… The Toyota Hilux. the fight against terrorism has also seen the military acquiring what has been described as the AK-47 of the highways in their numbers.

US officials have recently asked Toyota to figure out why its vehicles are showing up in so many ISIS videos, according to ABC News.

In an interview with ABC, Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the US told ABC that in recent years, as ISIS has risen to prominence in Iraq and Syria, the terror group has acquired hundreds of new Toyota pickup trucks.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily told ABC. “How could these brand-new trucks … these four-wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Ravi Somaiya pointed out in Newsweek in 2010, the Toyota Hilux pickup has been a fixture of several extremist movements over the past few decades.

“The Toyota Hilux is everywhere,” Andrew Exum, a former US Army Ranger who is now the US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, told Newsweek. “It’s the vehicular equivalent of the AK-47. It’s ubiquitous to insurgent warfare. And actually, recently, also counterinsurgent warfare. It kicks the hell out of the Humvee.”

But ISIS — also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh — is far from the first terror group to favor the automaker’s tough trucks as even Boko Haram has a big crush on this automobile.

The Hilux is apparently a durable truck that has proven useful for terrorists lightly armed special forces.

The truck is “fast, maneuverable, and packs a big punch [when it’s mounted with] a 50-caliber [machine gun] that easily defeats body armor on soldiers and penetrates lightly armored vehicles as well,” Alastair Finlan, who specializes in strategic studies at Aberystwyth University in the UK, told Newsweek.

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