Destroy the Islamic State. But Forget About Working With Assad

By THOMAS PIERRET and EMILE HOKAYEM
"The case for working with Assad conveniently ignores that it was other rebel groups, not Assad, who dealt the Islamic State its most serious setbacks when a coalition of anti-regime forces took heavy casualties to push it away from much of northern Syria earlier this year. These successes came because these rebel brigades could count on local support and intelligence and had legitimacy as Syrian nationalist forces. Unfortunately, the already outgunned rebels, because they lacked fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition and because they manned another front against Assad forces, could not sustain these advances.
The idea of Assad as a lesser evil has little traction among Syria’s Sunnis. This is only too understandable: It is the House of Assad, not the Islamic State, that has tormented them for more than four decades. Many of these Syrians wonder why the jihadis’ beheadings warrant intervention while Assad’s far more numerous atrocities do not."