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Daesh in Syria: major potential for expansion
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supported by the West. However, they did not manufacture jihadist movements or ship in
Chechen fighters. They may also have underestimated these activists’ capabilities. Was
Abdullah II of Jordan aware of what he was doing when he released al-Zarqawi along with
a hundred other prisoners to celebrate his accession in 1999?
If the regime has not attacked Daesh as much as other groups, this is because they do
not threaten the front line it defends between Lattakia, Homs, Damascus and Jordan. It
is only directly fighting Daesh in Deir ez-Zor and al-Hasakah, elsewhere the steppe acts
as a buffer between the two armies. Daesh also serves a perfect dissuader for the Syrian
population. It allows the Syrian government to rally hesitant or even hostile populations
behind its counter-insurgency strategy as they do not want to fall under Daesh control.
Since spring 2014, Daesh has been threatening the Ismaili city of al-Salamiyah, to the
East of Hama. The people of al-Salamiyah have always been hostile to the Assad regime.
Riots have shaken the city since spring 2011 and young Ismailis refuse to do their military
service. Faced with the threat of Daesh, Ismaili leaders petitioned the Syrian president
for protection. He replied that over 20,000 young people in the region were refusing to
do their military service, so all they had to do was to convince them to join the army or
national defence forces, and they would be drafted to protect the city.9 The same scenario
has been repeated in several locations threatened by the jihadis.
Since winter 2014-2015, Daesh has been infiltrating the region of Damascus and
Qalamoun, demanding local rebels’ allegiance. Could this be a prelude to an offensive
against the Syrian capital? Or is it part of a strategy to lead the Syrian uprising and eliminate
al-Nusra? Their hated brother now commands rebel groups in the West of the country.
It eliminated the “moderate” Hazm group and the Syrian Revolutionary Council from
Jabal al-Zawiyah. Both groups had been supported by the West and received sophisticated
weapons.10 Damascus expects the two jihadi groups to confront each other once they
have rallied or eliminated moderate rebels, which will leave its foreign critics with no
alternative. Nevertheless, the danger is that al-Nusra and Daesh could join forces – as
nothing separates them on the ideological front. But to date, the factors dividing them are
too strong and the Syrian regime is perfectly capable of maintaining competition between
both players, as it has done between the Lebanese militias for years.
Kurds, Shiites and Christians: victims of ethnic cleansing
In Syria, Daesh is pursuing the same policy al-Zarqawi used in Iraq: sharing local battles
in order to establish an Islamic State. The main threat to Sunni Arabs in North Eastern
Syria are the Kurds. The creation of Kurdish territories and autonomous governments is
a reversal of power that Arabs, who are used to ruling over the Kurds, find unacceptable.
Daesh, like previous Baathist regimes, uses this anti-Kurd sentiment, subjecting this
minority to a clear strategy of ethnic cleansing. It does not matter to them that the Kurds
9 Interview with an al-Salamiyah resident, February 2015.
10 Un groupe de rebelles syriensmodérés jette l’éponge. [Moderate SyrianRebel GroupThrows in theTowel].
Le Temps , Genève, 7 March 2015. Available in:
a445-d520cd1a7313/Un_groupe_de_rebelles_syriens_mod%C3%A9r%C3%A9s_jette_l%C3%A9ponge