There Would Be No ISIS Without Assad

Canada Goose Jackets Every week, we bring you one overlooked aspect of the stories that made news in recent days. Canada Goose Jackets

Canada Goose sale According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the war in Syria is very simple: President Bashar Assad’s regime is fighting the Islamic State militant group and associated terrorist organizations. Canada Goose sale

In Putin’s version of Syrian history, as laid out in his United Nations speechon Monday, the Islamic State was “forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes” and propelled by foreign military support for canada goose outlet las vegas Syrian rebels. In other words, Western nations helped create the Islamic State by rejecting Assad and naively supporting other opposition fighters whose existence actually boosts the Islamic State. General Assembly.

buy canada goose jacket Two days later, Russia launchedairstrikes in https://www.canadagooseofficials.ca Syria. Putin claimed the strikes targeted the Islamic State, but witnesses, analysts and simple geography indicate otherwise the areas hit are held by other Syrian rebel forces. A 2014 study of the IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center database found just 6 percent of the Syrian regime’s counterterrorism operations directly targeted canada goose outlet online reviews the extremist group. buy canada goose jacket

Diplomats and analysts caution there is no evidencethat the Islamic State is canada goose outlet a creation or proxy of Assad’s regime. But they canada goose outlet edmonton dowork togetherto the extent that their interests overlap. For now, they share an interest in canada goose outlet black friday sale decimating the rest of the Syrian opposition, and they use the threat of each other to gather recruits and allies.

canada goose Moreover, Assad and his regime have been instrumental in advancing the rise of the Islamic State since the very beginning. invasion in 2003. coalition forces. canada goose

Canada Goose Outlet Syria quickly emerged as the main conduit for foreign fighters who swelled the ranks of al Qaeda in Iraq. Militants from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere streamed through the country to join the insurgency. commandos in canada goose outlet uk sale 2007 showed that90 percent of the group’s foreign fightershad entered Iraq via Syria, with the help of Syrian intelligence agents. diplomatsaccording to Wikileaks cables. Canada Goose Outlet

cheap Canada Goose “Assad and his intelligence services took the view that jihad could be nurtured and manipulated to serve the Syrian government’s aims,” Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, wrotein 2014 for the London Review of Books. cheap Canada Goose

canada goose uk outlet In 2011, as peaceful protests erupted against Assad’s repressive regime, the government released more jihadists from prison. Syrian activists and terrorism analysts argue that this was a deliberate ploy to discredit the nonviolent opposition by fueling a violent insurgency. canada goose uk outlet

Some jihadists saw the same scheme, but played along anyway. “The Islamists were sure that the Assad regime had offered the amnesty knowing full well that they would take up arms against it, and that kind of self canada goose victoria parka outlet fulfilling prophecy. must have been what the government wanted,” Rania Abouzeid wrote in a 2014 Politico investigation.

canada goose factory sale “It would be jihadi [violence], and this would allow the regime to say to the world, ‘Look at the terrorists.’ We were aware of this,” one al Qaeda leader freed in 2011 told Abouzeid. canada goose factory sale

After the Syrian revolution erupted, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, then the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq,sent an associate named Abu Mohammad al Golani to Syria to set up a branch there. Golani linked canada goose outlet seattle up with the militants freed by Assad and established the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria called Jabhat al Nusra. Baghdadi tried to join Golani’s group with his in across border organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Golani and the head of al Qaeda rebuffed him, so Baghdadi took his organization out of the al Qaeda network, renamed it the Islamic State and declared himself caliph.

Whether by design or not, Syria’s war soon followed a trajectory that was very convenient for Assad, but utterly devastating for ordinary Syrians. Peaceful protests were crushed. The secular opposition was defeated at every turn. And Syria was flooded with jihadist militants from all over the world fighting the regime and each other.

Canada Goose online Opposition activists say this was Assad’s plan all along. Iraqi officials told The Wall Street Journal last year that the Syrian president has privately admitted the same. Western officials point to evidence that the Islamic State and the Assad regime have at least tacit cooperation on the battlefield: They rarely attack each other, the regime buys oil from Islamic State territory, and the Islamic State cleared the way for regime forces to capture the city of Aleppo last year. Canada Goose online

Syria expert and Brookings Institution fellow Charles Lister this week urged Western leadersnot to fall for the machinations of Assad or Putin. The fact that Western officials are even contemplatingtempering their demand for Assad’s removal after Putin put military muscle behind the dictator, canada goose outlet belgium he said, shows they are “dangerously disconnected from Syria’s realities.”

“Well over 100,000 Syrian men currently fighting the Assad regime have sworn to do so until he is removed from power,” Lister pointed out. Helping Assad stay in powerwould “almost certainly spark a jihadist mobilization the canada goose premium outlet like of which the world has never seen,” he said.