The al-Assad regime's sordid history of weaponising jihadists

As regional normalisation continues, the regime's adversaries inside Syria find themselves at a time of increased vulnerability. For example, within days of Saudi Arabia's re-established ties with Iran, a US military base was struck by an Iranian suicide drone, leaving one contractor dead.

Like Iran, IS will also be keen to exploit new imbalances — and like Iran, IS may also stand to benefit from regime passive facilitation or active support.

History of cooperation

Indeed, IS and its predecessors have a long history of working directly with al-Assad's regime and benefiting from its indirect facilitation. Over the space of decades, Syrian regime officials have spoken about their practice of 'embedding' within jihadists in order to nurture, manipulate and weaponise them.

The strategy dates back to — and results from — early confrontations with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and ultimately the Hama Massacre in 1982. By the late-1990s, it was Syria's Directorates of General and Military Intelligence that became most invested in dealing with and within jihadist movements — giving birth to relationships that have continued since.

By 1999, Syria had become home to a number of extremist movements — a byproduct of Hafez al-Assad's 'opening' up to Islam earlier that decade.

The most potent of those movements was led by Abu al-Qaqaa in Aleppo, whose hundreds of Ghurabaa al-Sham supporters publicly celebrated the September 11 attacks  in 'festivals' fostered by government authorities.

Abu al-Qaqaa was, unsurprisingly, an operative controlled by Syrian intelligence, which had brought him to Aleppo in 1999 and set him up with forged identity documents and a mosque from which to operate where he became a formidable player.

An invaluable opportunity

America's 2003 invasion of Iraq provided the Syrian regime an invaluable opportunity to 'export' a growing domestic threat.

With the blessing of regime-appointed Grand Mufti Ahmed Kaftaro, who declared jihad against the Americans to be 'fardh ayn' — meaning obligatory, for men and women alike — Syria rapidly became the epicentre of international jihadist mobilisation.

Within two weeks of the invasion, at least 5,000 jihadist volunteers had crossed from Syria into Iraq. By 2007, intercepted jihadist materials and intelligence revealed that 90% of suicide bombers and 85-90% of all foreign jihadists in Iraq had come via Syria — many in Syrian government buses, flagged through open border crossings. 

For years, Al-Qaeda in Iraq operated a network of safehouses across Syria, and training camps along the Iraqi border — all overseen by Syrian intelligence officers.

This jihadist infrastructure in Syria was run by Abu Ghadiya, whose case officer was none other than Asef Shawkat, chief of Military Intelligence and Bashar's al-Assad's brother-in-law.

Senior al-Qaeda in Iraq operatives enjoyed safe-haven on Syrian soil and their injuries were treated in Syrian military hospitals. When Iraq's government came under domestic pressure in 2009, the Syrian regime hosted several meetings convening al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders to plan and conduct a string of massive bombings that killed hundreds in Baghdad.

Instrumental role

Syria's strategic support to al-Qaeda in Iraq was instrumental in that group's meteoric rise and its bloody sectarian war across Iraq. But it also threatened to grow out of control, bringing domestic threats to Syria.

In 2005, the Syrian regime briefly 'exported' this increased challenge to Lebanon, leading to spikes in violence there carried out by Fatah al-Islam and Asbat al-Ansar. But in the late-2000s, it also triggered a string of terror attacks in Syria, most claimed by Jund al-Sham.

A purposely-designed self-fulfilling prophecy

But like with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the popular uprising at home in 2011 afforded the regime another off-ramp. While it detained thousands of protesters and pro-democracy activists, the regime released hundreds of jihadists from prison — including nearly 50 of Jabhat al-Nusra's founding leaders, most of whom went on to join IS in 2013.

As Syria collapsed into civil conflict in 2012, jihadists had a decade-old national infrastructure upon which to build themselves into a formidable force.

The regime's early framing of its opposition as 'terrorists' was a purposely-designed self-fulfilling prophecy and, with time, cynical regime action — and inaction — ensured it came true.

As Syria's mainstream opposition surged from 2013 to 2015, the regime and IS almost ignored each other altogether. In 2014, for example, only 13% of IS attacks targeted regime areas, and only 9% of regime actions targeted IS.

Regime forces also habitually cleared territories to allow IS to freely transit towards opposition-held frontlines, while regime air strikes frequently hit opposition positions facing IS. Such actions undeniably drained opposition resources and fueled IS's capacity to expand and consolidate control over territory.

Regime passive and active support to IS also extended into the financial sphere, with a series of long-standing arrangements to purchase IS oil and wheat, and to pay IS to operate and protect energy facilities.

Much of this was initially facilitated by Syrian-Russian businessman George Haswani, but later transferred to Mohammed al-Qaterji (for energy) and Samer Foz (for wheat).

While the international coalition was coordinating a complex military, economic and cyber offensive against IS's financial assets, al-Assad's regime was filling IS's pockets with millions and millions of dollars. 

The return of IS

Today, even while all of its frontlines with the opposition and the Syrian Democratic Forces are frozen, the Syrian regime is comprehensively failing to contain — let alone defeat — IS's rural insurgency.

IS has also returned in force to Dara'a in the south, where locals are accusing the regime of using the jihadist group to conduct a campaign of assassinations targeting former rebel and opposition members. There is a mounting collection of evidence to suggest such accusations have considerable substance.

Yet from the outside, for casual observers or those otherwise not interested in unnecessary complexity, IS activity in Dara'a appears to simply be another cause for concern.

For more than two decades, the Syrian regime has been instrumental in aiding and abetting the most brutal and internationally-destructive terrorist organisation ever seen.

The al-Assad regime is unquestionably hoping that foreign governments will come to its rescue. Just as with the drug captagon, the Syrian regime has created a fire with IS and will not seek to present itself as the firefighter.