Could Assad’s downfall trigger Islamic State’s comeback?. ANALYSIS. The group rose from the chaos of the Syrian civil war, and now with a power vacuum in place, the West fears that it may re-establish a foothold in the region. Tuesday December 10 2024, 2.00pm, The Times. Isis formed a caliphate across Iraqi and Syrian borders after the civil war began in 2011ALAMY. Bashar al-Assad had barely fled his country before the United States announced it had carried out dozens of airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.. The strikes against targets including Isis leaders, operatives and camps were a sharp reminder that while Assad may be gone, the barbaric army of jihadists that rose from the soil of Syria’s destruction are far from a spent force.. On Monday Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, warned why such action had been necessary. “History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said. “Isis will try to use this period to re-establish its capabilities.”. Isis fighters in Raqqa, northern Syria, ten years ago. ALAMY. A Syria war monitor has reported that Isis fighters killed at least 54 government soldiers who were fleeing in the central province of Homs. On Tuesday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that jihadists captured “personnel fleeing military service in the desert… during the collapse of the regime” and “executed 54” of them in the Sukhna area in the Homs desert.. It was the localised power vacuums and post-uprising cartography of chaos in Syria that opened the door of opportunity for Isis to grow there. Assad sowed the seeds of it himself two decades ago when he allowed Syria to become a transit ground for foreign fighters seeking to take on the Americans occupying Iraq.. Advertisement. • Follow our live blog for the latest developments in Syria. Assad himself played a remarkable role in incubating the terror group that would form a caliphate stretching across the Iraqi and Syrian borders. In the early throes of the civil war that began in 2011, he threw prison cells occupied by jihadists open in the hope that their extremism would permanently taint the movement against him.. Assad’s narrative that all who opposed him were psychopathic religious extremists became a complicating factor for outside players picking a side or a faction to support.. While instrumental in their rise, Assad had little to do with Isis’s final territorial defeat, in the town of Bargouz, led on the ground by the western-backed Kurdish majority Syrian Democratic Forces and pounded from above by American firepower. Even after Isis’s loss of territory, Washington warned of as many as 20,000 insurgents still at liberty in largely ungoverned territory.. The US was also scathing of allies who refused to repatriate their own citizens to face terror trials at home, preferring to leave them all together in the same dangerous cauldron from which the movement first emerged.. Advertisement. Thousands remain in prisons in northwest Syria under the custody of mostly Syrian Kurdish forces, now in the sights of the Turkish government and military who see the end of Assad’s rule as a chance to rid themselves of the troublesome national aspirations of the Kurdish people for ever.. • UK faces diplomatic dilemma as rebels take power in Syria. It is those imprisoned jihadists who represented the greatest threat of an Isis resurgence. Isis itself was born in the American-run detention camps of Iraq before its fighters made the strategic move to Syria after the uprising.. Large numbers of captured Isis fighters were repatriated to Iraq, where they were executed or remain on death row. Those still in Syria remain in legal and political limbo. In the civilian camps like al-Hol, where Isis wives and families are held, the first “cubs of the caliphate” as Isis dubbed them are now nearing their teens.. News that the Israeli military have crossed into Syria since Assad’s fall have chimed with fears of an Islamic takeover among anxious Syrian civilians. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader who has effectively seized power in Damascus, has spoken in emollient terms about Syria’s future, even removing the Islamic headgear he wore as the former leader of Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda.. Advertisement. Isis became a prominent force in the Middle East during the Syrian civil war. REUTERS. Isis’s barbarism so eclipsed even that of al-Qaeda that the former allies swiftly turned to enemies. The falling-out is reminiscent of that between al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan where today, despite the Taliban being in firm power, Isis is on the rise.. Isis has little appetite for Jolani’s talk of tolerance and a Syria for all Syrians. The anti-Assad uprising in 2011 was nothing more for Isis than a dragon it could ride to power. What it created, however, was a failed and fragmented state, a patchwork of ungoverned and unstable zones all too easy for an apocalyptic cult and its charismatic leader to turn into its so-called “caliphate”.. It was the West as a whole on which Isis focused its firepower and hatred, drawing in so many foreign fighters for its warped mission.. The Middle East has changed much since then and not all for the better. The bloodshed in Gaza stands out as a potential rallying cry for a new generation of jihadists. In recent weeks, the Arab League, having readmitted Assad’s Syria, was leaning on him to break with a faltering Iran.. Europe was also tipping its toe in the water, to discuss illegal immigration. None of this will be quickly forgotten.. Video Icon. VIDEO. Netanyahu issues warning to new rulers of Syria. December 10 2024, 9.40pm. Edmund Bower, Damascus |. David Harding. |. Joshua Thurston. |. Gabrielle Weiniger. , Israel Correspondent |. Fintan Hogan. | Keeva Cussen. ANALYSIS. Why is Israel striking Syria?. December 10 2024, 1.00pm. Gabrielle Weiniger. , Tel Aviv. PROMOTED CONTENT. Previous article. The British jihadists who could be freed from Syrian camps. Previous article. Next article. Death of ‘world-renowned’ Jaguar car restorer treated as murder. Next article
