Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

Now Syrians were learning just how cynical Assad’s goodwill gesture had been. Among the inmates discharged over the spring and summer were a number of radical Islamists who belonged to known terrorist organizations. Some were jihadists who had been picked up while attempting to cross into Iraq to join the insurgency there. Others were suspected al-Qaeda members who had been snatched by the CIA and secretly delivered to Syria under the spy agency’s “extraordinary rendition” program. The freed Islamists were too few in number to threaten the regime seriously, but their presence inside the country would help supply a veneer of truth for Assad’s extremist claims: now there were, in fact, a handful of authentic jihadists in the opposition camp. It was the same tactic used by the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who emptied his jails in an apparent attempt to sow strife among the regime’s opponents.

That is one pernicious, cynical, brand of leadership.