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Pragmatic Relationship With the Syrian Regime
The Islamic State and the Syrian regime mutually benefit from one
another, and consequently the relationship between the two has been
largely pragmatic. The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has
been an economic client for the Islamic State as well as an indirect
facilitator of its military activities, while the group helps to
validate Assad’s narrative that he is fighting Islamist extremists, an
approach he has been using since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in
2011 to discredit the Syrian opposition. The Islamic State is also
useful for Assad because it serves as a tool to counter the regime’s
enemies, including both the Free Syrian Army (FSA)—a collection of
moderate rebel fighters—and groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda
affiliate in Syria that was created to fight the regime.
The Islamic State first arose in Syria in areas that the regime had lost
to the opposition but which were far from the front lines. Opposition
groups did not have a big military presence in those areas—and in most
cases were instead focused on fighting the regime elsewhere—making them
ideal for the Islamic State. The regime did not prioritize retaking
these areas because Assad apparently calculated that allowing the
Islamic State to operate in them and fight against the Syrian opposition
and Jabhat al-Nusra would weaken his opponents, and that once the
opposition was eradicated, the regime would be able to control the
Islamic State.2 In doing so, Assad counted on presenting himself to the
West as a counterterrorism partner. The Islamic State in turn did not
prioritize fighting the regime, believing that it could easily overwhelm
it in the future, and concentrated instead on building its
state-within-a-state.3
The strategy used by the Islamic State is diverse and is based on
pragmatism as well as the merger of military, media, and socioeconomic
operations.
The absence of front lines with the Islamic State gave the regime an
excuse not to fight it and gave the militant group the ability to hold
areas and recruit local and foreign fighters. The lack of fighting also
encouraged many Syrians to move to areas controlled by the Islamic State
in the pursuit of security rather than ideology. This came at a time
when the Syrian opposition was badly fragmented due to both political
disagreements and the lack of a viable military strategy.
The Islamic State took hold of resource-rich areas, beginning in
mid-2014 with the northern governorate of Raqqa, and eventually became
financially self-sufficient in Syria by selling oil, wheat, and water;
demanding ransom for kidnapped foreigners; and imposing taxes on local
populations.4
The Syrian regime has been a key economic partner for the group, which
has been selling oil from its wells in Syria at discounted prices to the
regime. Although the Islamic State has also sold oil to both the FSA and
Jabhat al-Nusra, which in turn facilitated and benefited from the sale
of oil on the black market in Turkey, this activity has been greatly
reduced due to Turkey’s increased monitoring of activities on its border
with Syria. The regime, however, remains a key client.5
Syrian government forces began attacking areas controlled by the Islamic
State in June 2014, after the group’s expansion in Iraq threatened to
destabilize Shia areas close to Assad’s ally, Iran. But most of the
Assad regime’s military engagement has been directed at the Free Syrian
Army. In November 2014, a report by Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Center
revealed that until that point, only 6 percent of the regime’s attacks
that year had been directed at Islamic State targets.6
The pragmatic relationship between the Islamic State and the Syrian
regime continued despite the latter’s bombing of Raqqa in late 2014.
They still appear to coordinate on the provision of services like
electricity, with the militant group controlling a number of dams on the
Iraq-Syria border and the regime continuing to pay most of the salaries
of state employees residing in Islamic State–controlled areas.7
The regime’s pragmatism can also be seen in its passivity toward the
group’s movements in areas with significant opposition presence. The
regime did not stand in the way when Islamic State fighters approached
the Qalamoun Mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border to fight the Free
Syrian Army in the area in 2014. It also did not interfere in early 2015
when the Islamic State took over the Yarmouk refugee camp near
Damascus—and fought antiregime groups during the attack.8 A similar
scenario occurred when the Islamic State attacked the ancient desert
city of Palmyra in May 2015, although unlike in Yarmouk, there was not a
significant opposition presence in Palmyra. In mid-2015, direct
confrontations with the regime remained limited to areas like Rif Hama,
the Haql al-Shaer oilfield, the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, and,
since May 2015, Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
At the same time, the Islamic State has avoided attacks on certain
regime areas because they lie between its territories and those
controlled by its rival Jabhat al-Nusra, thereby forming a buffer zone
between the two groups. The Islamic State has tried to avoid having
front lines with Jabhat al-Nusra because they both regard fighting one
another as a distraction from their main goals (building the caliphate
for the former and fighting the regime for the latter). This was evident
in east Hama as well as at the regime-controlled Abu al-Duhur military
airfield on the Idlib-Aleppo border in northwestern Syria. Neither group
has attempted to storm the airfield since Jabhat al-Nusra’s failed
attempt in January 2015, when its advance resulted in a high number of
casualties at the hands of regime forces, leading the group to halt its
operation in the village of Tal Salmo on the outskirts of the area.9
However, the takeover of Idlib in April 2015 by the rival Jaysh al-Fateh
rebel coalition, of which Jabhat al-Nusra is a major member, and the
expansion of its attacks northward toward Aleppo, upstaged the Islamic
State. Consequently, beginning in May 2015, the Islamic State increased
its own attacks on regime areas in Aleppo and engaged in some military
confrontations with Jaysh al-Fateh.
But this change in the dynamic between the Islamic State and the regime
does not signal that the pragmatism between them is beginning to
unravel. The regime has still not been putting up a serious fight
against the Islamic State because ultimately, if the group eliminates
other Islamist factions and the only remaining major players in Syria
are the Assad regime and the Islamic State, the former will be able to
appeal to the international community for support. The Islamic State,
for its part, seems to base its calculations on being able to overwhelm
the regime eventually.10
Read more at:
http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/06/29/islamic-state-s-strategy-lasting-and-expanding/ib5x
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