http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-assad-isis_560d7db0e4b0dd85030b2368
"As for Bashar Assad and his regime, they are barely fighting the Islamic State, either. A 2014 study of the IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center database found just 6 percent of the Syrian regime's counterterrorism operations directly targeted the extremist group.
Diplomats and analysts caution there is no evidence that the Islamic State is a creation or proxy of Assad's regime. But they do work together to
the extent that their interests overlap. For now, they share an
interest in decimating the rest of the Syrian opposition, and they use
the threat of each other to gather recruits and allies.
Moreover, Assad and his regime have been instrumental in advancing the rise of the Islamic State since the very beginning.
The extremist group was formed in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. It was then known as al Qaeda in Iraq, a local branch of the global al Qaeda network that waged a bloody insurgency against U.S. coalition forces.
Syria quickly emerged as the main conduit for foreign fighters who swelled the ranks of al Qaeda in Iraq. Militants from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere streamed through the country to join the insurgency. Records captured from al Qaeda in Iraq by U.S. commandos in 2007 showed that 90 percent of the group's foreign fighters had entered Iraq via Syria, with the help of Syrian intelligence agents. The Assad regime also let jihadists out of prison and offered them military training to fight in Iraq, Syrian activists told U.S. diplomats according to Wikileaks cables."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-helps-assad-gain-legitimacy-in-west-a-1066211.html
"Elsewhere, attacks by Assad supporters and by Islamic State have likewise taken place with astonishing temporal and geographic proximity to each other. Near the northern Syrian city of Tal Rifaat in early November, for example, an IS suicide attacker detonated his car bomb at an FSA base, though without causing much damage. Just half an hour later, two witnesses say, Russian jets attacked the same base for the first time.
Was it a coincidence? Likely not. There have been dozens of cases since 2014 in which Assad's troops and IS have apparently been coordinating attacks on rebel groups, with the air force bombing them from above and IS firing at them from the ground. In early June, the US State Department announced that the regime wasn't just avoiding IS positions, but was actively reinforcing them.
Such cooperation isn't surprising. The rebels -- in all their variety, from nationalists to radical Islamists -- represent the greatest danger to both Assad and IS. And if the two sides want to survive in the long term, the Syrian dictator and the jihadists are useful to each other. From Assad's perspective, if the rebels were to be vanquished, the world would no longer see an alternative to the Syrian dictator. But the rebels are also primarily Sunni, as are two-thirds of the Syrian populace -- meaning that, from the IS perspective, once the rebels were defeated, the populace would be faced either with submission and exile, or they would join IS.
In short, a Syria free of rebels would put both Assad and Islamic State in powerful positions, though not powerful enough to defeat the other. Still, such a situation would be vastly preferable to the alternatives: Being toppled from power (Assad), or being destroyed (IS)."
Moreover, Assad and his regime have been instrumental in advancing the rise of the Islamic State since the very beginning.
The extremist group was formed in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. It was then known as al Qaeda in Iraq, a local branch of the global al Qaeda network that waged a bloody insurgency against U.S. coalition forces.
Syria quickly emerged as the main conduit for foreign fighters who swelled the ranks of al Qaeda in Iraq. Militants from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere streamed through the country to join the insurgency. Records captured from al Qaeda in Iraq by U.S. commandos in 2007 showed that 90 percent of the group's foreign fighters had entered Iraq via Syria, with the help of Syrian intelligence agents. The Assad regime also let jihadists out of prison and offered them military training to fight in Iraq, Syrian activists told U.S. diplomats according to Wikileaks cables."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-helps-assad-gain-legitimacy-in-west-a-1066211.html
"Elsewhere, attacks by Assad supporters and by Islamic State have likewise taken place with astonishing temporal and geographic proximity to each other. Near the northern Syrian city of Tal Rifaat in early November, for example, an IS suicide attacker detonated his car bomb at an FSA base, though without causing much damage. Just half an hour later, two witnesses say, Russian jets attacked the same base for the first time.
Was it a coincidence? Likely not. There have been dozens of cases since 2014 in which Assad's troops and IS have apparently been coordinating attacks on rebel groups, with the air force bombing them from above and IS firing at them from the ground. In early June, the US State Department announced that the regime wasn't just avoiding IS positions, but was actively reinforcing them.
Such cooperation isn't surprising. The rebels -- in all their variety, from nationalists to radical Islamists -- represent the greatest danger to both Assad and IS. And if the two sides want to survive in the long term, the Syrian dictator and the jihadists are useful to each other. From Assad's perspective, if the rebels were to be vanquished, the world would no longer see an alternative to the Syrian dictator. But the rebels are also primarily Sunni, as are two-thirds of the Syrian populace -- meaning that, from the IS perspective, once the rebels were defeated, the populace would be faced either with submission and exile, or they would join IS.
In short, a Syria free of rebels would put both Assad and Islamic State in powerful positions, though not powerful enough to defeat the other. Still, such a situation would be vastly preferable to the alternatives: Being toppled from power (Assad), or being destroyed (IS)."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/isis-syria-iraq-war-al-qaeda-arab-spring/
"There is also undoubtedly sympathy for ISIS among large portions of the Saudi population, including those who contribute financially, or volunteer to fight. Yet — while weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia (and Qatar) to Syrian groups have likely ended up in the hands of ISIS through defections or capture — there is little convincing evidence that ISIS is directly funded, or armed, by Saudi Arabia or any other Gulf state.
At a rhetorical level, the relationship between the two is one of profound antipathy and hatred. ISIS considers the Saudi monarchy to be one of its most despised enemies, and the overthrow of the al-Saud ruling family is one of the group’s principal aims. The Saudi monarchy will countenance no other claimant to global Islamic leadership, and fears the threat ISIS presents to its own rule."
On the other hand, the growing strength of ISIS does have a clear link to the repression directed by the Assad government against the Syrian uprising. A few months into the uprising, Assad released hundreds of prisoners (among them well-trained jihadists), many of whom became leaders and fighters in Islamic fundamentalist groups. Former high-ranking Syrian intelligence agents have claimed that this was a deliberate attempt by the regime to stoke sectarian discord and paint the uprising in an Islamist light.
The Assad government has a long record of attempting to manipulate such groups, including a prisoner release in the early 2000s and the facilitation of thousands of jihadist volunteers across the border to join up with Zarqawi network in Iraq. Indeed, by February 2010, Syrian intelligence officials were attempting to market their infiltration and manipulation of jihadist groups as a basis for deepening security cooperation with the US in the region."
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/404/html
"the Syrian government’s support for extremist Sunni groups likely predates the start of the Syrian Civil War. Evidence from the Sinjar Records, a cache of al-Qaida files obtained by the American military in 2007, indicates that Syria helped to funnel jihadist fighters into Iraq during the mid-2000s.[7]"
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/assad-regime-jihadis-collaborators-allies/
On the subject of the historical record, the duration of Assad support for the jihadis is exaggerated. As al-Qa’ida in Iraq vanished through absorption into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) umbrella in 2006-7, the inflow of muhajireen into Iraq largely ceased as ISI became almost entirely Iraqi, particularly at the leadership level (cf. this article by Aaron Zelin on the sparks of a low-level jihadi campaign against Assad in Syria that was ultimately quashed in the period 2007-2010).
In any case, the regime also provided a safe haven for other Iraqi insurgents outside al-Qa’ida and ISI, and as Sunnis joined the political process in 2008-9, the regime initially hoped for an Ayad Allawi victory in the 2010 elections, reflecting its then growing ties with Turkey and an opposition to the U.S.’s preferred candidate Maliki, who has always loathed Assad. Indeed, Assad’s eventual switch of support to Maliki after intense lobbying was only ever a cosmetic change.
.....
Ultimately, attempting to prove an ISIS-regime conspiracy without any conclusive evidence is unhelpful, because it draws attention away from the real reasons why ISIS grew and gained such prominence: namely, rebel groups tolerated ISIS. Back in the summer of last year, I noted how pace the claims of SMC circles, not all those even by the FSA banner were hostile to ISIS. The most prominent case-in-point is Colonel Oqaidi, who used to head the Aleppo FSA military council. Oqaidi constantly downplayed the idea that ISIS constituted a threat, describing his relations with ISIS as “excellent” in an interview with Orient News and deriding concerns about its conduct as “media intimidation.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2015/11/buying-isil-oil-151127173736852.html
Assad & Kurds among customers of ISIS oil.
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