The Assad-ISIS Axis
Syria’s thug is no ally of ours
LEADING presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle have recently found some common ground. And they’re giving bipartisanship a bad name.
The GOP’s national poll leader, Donald Trump, and the party’s Iowa frontrunner, Ted Cruz, agree with selfproclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who is within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in Iowa and has maintained a steady lead over her in New Hampshire: Bashar alAssad mustn’t go.
Syria’s murderous dictator has convinced Trump, Cruz and Sanders — and many of their supporters — that he’s crucial to the West’s fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
It is, of course, wise to be cautious about regime change in the Middle East. But in defending Assad’s role in the war on terror, these pols have been had: Assad helped create and still sustains ISIS, and is certainly no ally of ours against it.
During the Iraq war, Assad allowed the SyriaIraq border to be a key transit point for fighters seeking to attack coalition troops. That policy fed the growth of ISIS’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq.
When the Arab Spring reached Syria, the fierce Islamist terror group turned part of the country into a recruiting and training ground. But Assad didn’t see ISIS as its main enemy. Last year, foreignpolicy analyst Hayes Brown wrote that “As late as June, analysts concluded that a de facto truce was in place between ISIS and Damascus.” ISIS focused more on building its caliphate, which required eliminating competition from moderate rebels, who were also being targeted by Assad.
Assad had also released Islamic radicals from Syrian prisons earlier in the conflict hoping, according to NBC’s Richard Engel, that “by injecting the militants into the pool of rebels, he’d poison the water,” thereby turning his insistence that he was fighting terrorists, not democrats, into a selffulfilling prophecy. He succeeded. Meanwhile, last year only 6 percent of the Assad regime’s military operations targeted ISIS, according to one study. Nearly all of the military’s fire was reserved for the other rebels.
This dynamic — the undeniable fact that Assad is mostly steering clear of targeting ISIS — creates a bizarre reality on the ground in Syria. Example: ISIS territory has remained among the safest places in the country. Why? “Coalition bombing in the caliphate is much less indiscriminate than that of the Russian and Syrian air forces elsewhere,” explains The Economist.
In other words, the West isn’t doing much to defeat ISIS, and Assad and Russia are focusing their attacks elsewhere in the country, with no regard for civilian safety.
But it’s not just Assad’s handsoff military approach that helps ISIS. The terror group also has something of a functioning economy — again, in large part thanks to Assad.
ISIS has captured oil fields, and now sells that oil . . . back to Assad, among others. ISIS also sells natural gas to Damascus. “In exchange for gas, the regime provides utilities like electricity, which ISIS taxes accordingly,” reports The Daily Beast.
Food, too. Syrian rebels have sporadically captured elements of the country’s wheat production — flour mills, grain silos and the like. But they don’t always know what to do with them.
Enter the Assad regime: “Often, when armed groups were able to keep control of wheatrelated infrastructure, they would cut a deal with the regime: Workers could pass from one side to another to keep the production chain going,” The Washington Post reported. “Agricultural experts in Islamic Stateheld Raqqa, for example, are allowed to come to Damascus for government training.”
ISIS knows where its bread is buttered.
It’s also worth pointing out that Assad’s patron is Vladimir Putin’s Russia — and Russia is no ally of ours either against ISIS. The State Department, expressing some frustration with Russia’s double game, noted in October that more than 90 percent of Russia’s strikes in Syria targeted the nonISIS opposition.
But there’s more: Eli Lake and Josh Rogin revealed last week that Russia has increased its deployment of airdefense systems in areas where moderate rebels were receiving US air support. The result? American planes had to be grounded.
Russia, then, has stepped up its intervention — even risking conflict with the United States — specifically tailored to help ISIS and Assad.
And that’s because those three — Russia, ISIS and Assad — are on the same side.
It’s just not ours.