Assad infiltrates jihadist ranks to divide and rule Deborah Haynes and Laura Pitel, The Times President Assad has infiltrated an extreme jihadist group in Syria in a “Machiavellian” plot to divide the opposition and bolster his own position, terrorist experts and rebel forces claimed last night. Regime officials are alleged to have penetrated the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and helped hundreds of Iraqi Shia fighters to obtain false identity papers so they could enter Syria and fight for the Sunni terror group, according to leaked documents. At the same time, Syrian forces appear not to be targeting areas where the hardline Islamist militants who used to be allied with al-Qaeda are fighting. The apparent move is in stark contrast to the daily bombardments against positions held by other opposition groups, the Free Syrian Army and other non-Islamist rebel factions. By secretly enabling ISIS to carry out brutal terrorist attacks, Mr Assad is able to portray the three-year uprising against his rule as a plot by extremists rather than moderate freedom fighters. This puts Britain and its allies in a difficult position, as fears grow that any military assistance to the rebels could end up in the hands of Islamist extremists. An official Syrian report leaked by an opposition website claimed that Syrian state security was providing false identity papers to enable Shia fighters from neighbouring Iraq to join ISIS. The document, written for Major General Ali Mamlouk, a senior Syrian security official, and signed by Colonel Haider Haider, the head of a security committee in the town of Nubbul in Aleppo province, alleged that as many as 2,500 Iraqi Shia fighters would be enlisted to join ISIS. It added that there were already 150 well-trained Iraqi Shia members and a further 600 others with a range of specialities. “I do confirm the authenticity of these documents,” said Omar Abu Layla, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, who was involved in the publication of a trove of other purported Syrian security papers on a Facebook page titled DamascusLeaks.“They have been taken from regime offices. It has taken us almost two and a half years to get these documents,” he said. A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office called reports of co-operation between ISIS and the regime “credible”. “Nothing would surprise us when it comes to the regime,” she said. “Assad has a long history of supporting terrorist groups and activities in the region.” Suspicion of collaboration was fuelled this month when a convoy of ISIS fighters was allegedly able to travel through regime-controlled territory without being challenged to fight other rebel factions near the Iraqi border. Samir Mohamed, a senior member of the Free Syrian Army, claimed that a second ISIS convoy was able to reach the battle in al-Bukamal by travelling from the Iraqi side of the border. “I think the regime is controlling ISIS,” he said, speaking by mobile phone from Turkey. “Assad wants to say to the West: ‘I am fighting terrorists in Syria’.” He said that captured ISIS militants have admitted the relationship. In addition, easily identifiable buildings used by ISIS in the city of Raqa’a in the east of Syria, which is controlled by the extremist group, have not been targeted by Syrian forces in further evidence of alleged co-operation, according to opposition sources. Mr Assad, from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, a Shia Muslim offshoot, would seem an unlikely bedfellow for a hardline Sunni Muslim extremist movement such as ISIS. However, the regime regards the group as a strategic ally in certain situations. Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, said he did not believe that Mr Assad was “running” ISIS. “The internal fighting [between the rebels] is the best thing that has happened to the Syrian regime in the last several months,” he said. Mr Assad inadvertently helped in the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, which was established with the blessing of al-Qaeda in 2006 during the chaos that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq. The regime, keen to derail a US venture so close to home, secretly allowed Syria to become the main route for jihadists wanting to fight the US military across its border. Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at King’s College London, said that many of the older and more senior figures in ISIS probably had records with Syrian intelligence, and that some were likely to be collaborating with the regime. “There still is no solid evidence, however, that the jihadists as a whole are controlled by the regime, despite repeated announcements by opposition figures that such evidence would be forthcoming,” he wrote in a recent article for the London Review of Books. Olivier Guitta, director of research at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think-tank, said that he found the allegations of collaboration plausible. “Assad has been playing a very Machiavellian game,” he said. “We don’t know for sure how extensive is either the penetration or the alliance between ISIS and Assad, but there are facts that make us think that something fishy is going on — like the oil deal, for instance.” It is alleged that ISIS and the al-Nusra Front, a rival Islamist group, are financing their activities by selling oil and gas in seized territory back to the regime.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 08:58:59 +0000
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