Did Assad Really Help Build ISIS? An Examination of the Evidence

This article uses publicly available evidence from 2003-2010 to explore the accusation that Bashar al Assad and the Syrian government deliberately supported Al-Qaeda jihadis in Syria so they could carry out attacks in Iraq. As these years were the formative ones for ISIS, then known by a series of different names, the evidence strongly, but not conclusively, points to Syria having helped ISIS form. There is no evidence that Syria intended for the jihadi group to grow into what it has become, but rather that Syria seems to have supported it for short-term, strategic ends.
Late last fall, a series was released by the Daily Beast about Bashar Al-Assad and his government’s supposed role in the formation of ISIS. Part One explored how the regime facilitated jihadis in Syria from 2000-2010 by letting them base themselves in Syria. Part Two details how a series of bombings in Damascus in late 2011 and early 2012 when the uprisings in Syria were really gaining steam were actually carried out by the Assad regime and blamed on Al-Qaeda. The defectors interviewed claim this was done to sectarianize the uprising and provide support for Assad’s discourse that he was fighting terror and needed Western support doing this. Part Three explores all the instances on the battlefield in Syria where the regime supposedly avoided clashing with ISIS.  The claims in the series, especially those in part one, have been present in pubic discourse for some time and were expressed in a more detailed form with citations by Charles Lister in his “The Syrian Jihad“. Can the claims that come from defectors and anti-regime rebels be corroborated in these other sources? What kinds of sources do these other works use and can they help us triangulate the issues?

https://historyxisis.com/2017/01/18/did-assad-really-help-build-isis-an-examination-of-the-evidence/