Daesh collapses in Syria but “regime continues to play the extremist card”

After the Syrian regime brutally responded to peaceful protesters who took to the streets in March 2011, its leader Bashar al Assad said he would “relentlessly fight terrorist groups”—referring the pro-democracy protesters.

Meanwhile, the regime released imprisoned Al Qaeda members beginning in 2011, right after the protests turned into an uprising. The released Al Qaeda militants later created the backbone of Daesh leadership, which spread to Syria in 2014 from Iraq.

“Before ISIS (Daesh) ascended to power, there were a number of Western and regional states which were determined to overthrow the Damascus regime,” Giorgio Cafiero, an expert on the Middle East and founder of Gulf State Analytics told TRT World. 

He said that the focus of numerous countries, including the US, European countries and Jordan, has changed after Daesh took control of a huge amount of territory—considering the defeat of Daesh was their primary interest in Syria instead of overthrowing the regime. 

“This development was a valuable opportunity for Assad because the rise of ISIS enabled the regime to portray itself as a bulwark against the forces of ‘radical Islam’,” he said.

The Assad regime and its ally Russia conducted air strikes in Syria, which they claimed were only aimed at Daesh or Al Qaeda-affiliated groups. Almost two years after Daesh entered Syria and declared Raqqa as its de-facto capital, the US said that more than 90 percent of the Russian air strikes in support of the Assad regime had targeted the moderate Syrian opposition. Right groups and observers also reported that regime fighter jets often targeted civilian areas.

With the backing of Russian air strikes and Iranian support on the ground, most of the opposition-held areas, including Aleppo, were captured by the Syrian regime by the end of 2017.

In late 2017, Daesh was defeated from all the urban areas in the country and was pushed to two small desert areas in the east. But the existence of former Al Qaeda affiliate HTS continues in Idlib, in the northwest of Syria.

And the Syrian regime intensified its attacks on eastern Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus, one of the last remaining opposition-held areas in Syria, as Damascus continued to say it was fighting Al Qaeda affiliates.

“There is much dispute about the extent to which the regime is actually fighting such extremists in eastern Ghouta,” said Cafiero.

“Nonetheless, the regime will still continue to play this card as it seeks to convince Western governments that if the regime were to ever fall, which doesn't seem likely, the ‘extremists’ would be the first ones to usurp power.”

Shifting alliances?

For Cafiero, Daesh’s entrance in Syria not only affected the conflict between the opposition and the regime, but also shaped the relationship between international players and how they approach the conflict locally. 

Russia and Iran have supported the Syrian regime since the beginning of the conflict, but Russia started its military intervention in 2015, after Daesh grew in Syria. 

“Russia, since day one of the Syrian crisis, has been committed to protecting the Damascus regime. And Russia saw American support for Syrian rebels as a great threat to Moscow's interests,” said Cafiero.

Turkey and the US, on the other hand, have been supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an umbrella organisation for armed opposition groups in the country against the Assad regime. But it changed when Daesh became another actor in the conflict. 

Starting in September 2014, Washington put the fight against Daesh as its priority, and began co-operating with the YPG as its forces on the ground in the fight, instead of the FSA. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, which is a designated terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU. The move angered Turkey and led to tensions between the US and Turkey.

“Now that ISIS has lost its strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the question of America's relationship with the YPG is getting increasingly controversial and sensitive,” said Cafiero. 

In an effort to address Turkey’s concerns to protect its borders, Washington promised Ankara to keep the group to the east of the Euphrates River. But the US-backed force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is dominated by the YPG, crossed the river to the west and took control of Manbij, and has still not withdrawn, despite the US’ promise to Turkey.

“Turkey is now more upset with the American leadership for continuing to back the YPG in a post-ISIS era, because Ankara sees this foreign policy as an existential threat to the territorial integrity of the Turkish nation-state.”

Daesh's presence in Syria since the beginning of 2014 changed the focus of war in the country and created tensions between global and regional powers, and there are still many unsolved issues between those countries.