طالما أن الأسد موجود, داعش موجودة أيضا

As long as there is an Assad, there will be an Isil - he'll make sure of it.
By David Blair
6:36PM GMT 07 Dec 2015
In the tangled world of the Middle East, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is the dictum most likely to cause tragic mistakes. Very often, the saying would be more accurate if adapted to read: “Beware the tyrant who cynically poses as an enemy of your enemy in order to strengthen his grip on power.”
So it is with Bashar al-Assad in Syria. From the very beginning of his country’s insurrection, Assad has done his best to help Islamist zealots hijack the Syrian opposition; he worked particularly hard to create ideal laboratory conditions for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). His supremely cynical aim was to convince the West to accept him as an essential bulwark against the very threat he helped to conjure into being. Put bluntly, Assad is an arsonist posing as a fireman.
This is an old trick. Every Arab dictator since Nasser has sought to confront his people and the world with a stark choice: either support me or watch the jihadists take over. The ruse is obvious, time-honoured – and remarkably effective.
Today, Western governments are constantly urged to accept Assad as a willing helper in the struggle against Isil. Never mind that his forces have committed every conceivable atrocity up to and including gassing children in their beds. We need all possible allies against Isil, runs the argument, particularly those who might provide the fabled “ground force” to take on the zealots in their Syrian heartland.
To understand why this policy is so mistaken requires following Assad’s warped logic. His one and only aim is survival. Having lost his grip on 80 per cent of Syria, the last card in his hand is to masquerade as our ally against Isil. If Isil were to be beaten, however, he would lose this final asset. Therefore he has an interest in preserving Isil.
So for as long as there is an Assad, there will be an Isil. He will make sure of it. Why? Because for as long as there is an Isil, some in the West will argue that we need Assad to defeat it.
The conclusion should be obvious: the man who needs Isil more than anyone else is not best qualified to cause their demise. Assad’s role in engineering Isil’s ascendancy is well-documented. Back in 2011 and 2012, he emptied Sednaya prison outside Damascus of its most dangerous Islamist prisoners. He must have known that these outlaws would use their liberty to infect the rebels with the jihadist virus – and they duly did so. An excellent book, Isis: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, names three Isil commanders who were carefully released from Assad’s jails.
Helped by the talent that the dictator had set free, Isil captured the oilfields of eastern Syria in 2013. But there is no point possessing oil unless you can sell the stuff. Fortunately for Isil, Assad bought their oil and funded their advance.
Today, Syria’s regime remains the largest single buyer of Isil’s oil and one of the biggest donors to the terrorists’ coffers. These facts are not seriously disputed, indeed the businessman accused of negotiating the oil deals between Isil and Assad – one George Haswani, the owner of HESCO engineering – has been named and subjected to EU sanctions.
Meanwhile, observers of the war have noticed a pattern. Assad strains every sinew to fight the non-Islamist rebels, but Isil has generally been immune from his barrel bombs and poison gas. Last year, only six per cent of Assad’s military operations targeted Isil, according to a study by IHS Jane’s, a defence consultancy. The other rebels felt the fury of 94 per cent of Assad’s military effort.
So forget the notion that allying with Assad against Isil is comparable to teaming up with Stalin against Hitler. From 1941 onwards, Stalin was at least fighting Hitler. Assad has never fought Isil as a priority, which is not surprising since he has no interest in their defeat.
There is a bitter irony here. Without the threat posed by Assad’s forces and Russian air power, many Sunni rebels in Syria would indeed take up arms against Isil. The way to turn them against Isil would be to stop the depredations of Assad. So the idea that the dictator is indispensable to the fight against Isil is the exact reverse of the truth. In fact, getting rid of Assad would be the key that unlocks a Sunni army to defeat the terrorists.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12038032/As-long-as-there-is-an-Assad-there-will-be-an-Isil-hell-make-sure-of-it.html