Some of those same Islamists

Bashar al-Assad’s reliance on Hezbollah and Iranian Shia militias for all those years of the civil war was a mistake pragmatically and otherwise. Something his father, Hafez al-Assad, would have avoided. He made an even more fatal mistake after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq when he made Syria a corridor for the passage of Sunni Islamists to Iraq. Some of those same Islamists brought back jihad to Syria. That is exactly how the likes of al-Jolani emerged in such large numbers following the 2011 uprisings. Also, Bashar al-Assad trusted and supported the Iraqi Baathists, another strategic mistake Hafez al-Assad would never have committed. Many former Iraqi officers and secret police agents started recruiting Sunni jihadis in Syria, especially after 2008. Bashar al-Assad is not the only state leader who made the fatal mistake of playing with Islamists. All those who tried to use Islamists ended up being used by Islamists. Islamism emerged first and foremost as an anti-communist movement. สล็อต เว็บตรง