Dr Faisal Al Qassem
It is clear that the Assad regime and his Russian, Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese allies have succeeded in terrorising the world with their ISIS bogeyman.
The Syrian regime was brilliant at playing on the tendon of Islamist terrorism even before the strong advent of ISIS on the scene, by warning the Syrians and the world of Islamists since the first day of the revolution.
It is no longer a secret that the regime played the card of the Islamist extremist bogeyman as a last resort to blackmail the world to allying with it instead of overthrowing it.
We have seen at a given moment how Bashar Al Assad launched thousands of dangerous Islamists from jails, and even contributed to arming and directing them.
After feeling threatened by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and those who are supporting it, the Syrian regime started strengthening, especially extremists, Islamist groups, in order to confront the FSA and take the popular revolution off course. There is nothing wrong if it occasionally faces the regime!
It is much better for the Syrian regime to appear in front of the world as facing Islamists that can be easily labelled terrorists and extremists, instead of confronting revolutionaries and people who want freedom, dignity and a decent living.
Since the regime has released some members of certain Islamist groups from prisons, it began to breathe a sigh of relief slowly, since the people’s revolution in the Syrian uprising is no longer mentioned in the international media, which is currently more interested in covering news about Islamist extremists.
Let us remember that the regime’s delegation to the Geneva negotiations was calling for the world to stand by its side to combat terrorism, and not to enter into negotiations with the opposition in order to remain in a transitional phase.
Some argue that whenever the Syrian regime felt endangered, it facilitated ISIS access to new areas in Syria, as it recently did when ISIS took over, overnight and without prior warning, the city of Palmyra and the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.
Some felt that the regime handed over the city of Palmyra with its huge cache of weapons to ISIS under an agreement and not as a result of battle. As a confirmation, the Turkish intelligence reported a few days ago that the Syrian regime coordinates all its steps with ISIS.
It is possible that the regime will later hand over to ISIS peaceful minority areas such as As-Salamiya with Ismailia majority and As-Suwayda with Druze majority to tell the world: “Look at how ISIS is capturing minority areas and threatening their existence”, so that the world will rush to Syria and protect Assad from falling under the pretext of counter terrorism.
It is obvious that the goal has become quite clear after the world began to tilt and cooperate with the Syrian regime and its allies to face jihadists, instead of overthrowing the regime.
The Russian Foreign Minister surprised the world a few days ago during his press conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Moallem, when he said that there is a tendency for a regional US-Arab coalition to face ISIS.
Lavrov spoke about the possibility of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan to participate with the Syrian regime to fight extremists in the region, which is a dramatic development by any standards. Al-Moallem described it as a miracle if it happens.
It is true that ISIS is neither the fabrication of the Syrian regime nor its allies. It is also true that the terrorist organisation has an independent special strategy and objectives, and it is not the regime’s agent.
However, ISIS is exploiting the fragile military regime in order to stretch and expand in Syria. The regime, in turn, facilitates ISIS movement and uses it as a bogeyman for two goals: In the interim, to intimidate Syrians in the interior in order to rush in the regimes’ arms and beg for pardon, and strategically to scare the world abroad that the Syrian regime’s alternative is an extremist terrorist group, so that the world will hurry to the Syrian arena to face all militant groups, especially since Assad knows very well that ISIS is useful to him only in the short term, but would later be a disaster.
Therefore, the Syrian regime wants to bring international troops to Syria to later protect it from the terrorist organisation in order to eliminate the remainder of the revolution in Syria under the pretext of combating terrorism.
This is what Bashar Al Assad and his Russian and Iranian tutors are blatantly after by trading with the bogeyman of terrorism.
However, matters are judged by their good endings. Therefore, who will later succeed in their strategies? Let us wait and see.
The writer is a columnist and presenter in Al Jazeera TV.
