In this chapter I will illustrate in facts what I called in the preface the “mysterious behavior of the Assad regime” during the Syrian crisis. . I will list 10 facts as examples of this ambiguous behavior and describe them briefly.This behavior was explained by the stream media as merely “stupidity” or “the expected reaction of a dictator trying to maintain his position”. Obviously, I don’t agree with this.This part is about FACTS, no theory here. I witnessed these facts first hand and added -when possible- references from various trusted sources. However, I would appreciate if the reader went even further and investigated these facts from other sources they might trust more.My own theory to explain this behavior will come in a later essay. That explanation is my own. The reader can contradict it. No facts there. However, I will also use several outside sources to support it.
***While thousands of foreign fighters were flooding into Syria, the Syrian regime’s army was working at full capacity to destroy Syrian cities one by oneFurther, and Soon after the rebellion started, the regime released thousands of arrested radicals who were detained in the famous prisons Sednaya and Palmira·         Abu Lokman, one of the founders of the Al Nusra front in Syria, who also worked as ISIS Leader (Emir) in Al Raqqa [North Syria, and the capital of ISIS in Syria]·         Mahmoud Al Kholaif, the security officer in ISIS·         Haj Fadel Al Agha, the relations officer·         Abu Abdul Rahman Al Hamwi, Al Nusra leader in Hama·         Abu Naser Darwasha, the cousin of Abu Mohammad Al Jawlani, the leader of HTS (Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, previously Al Nusra Front)·         Abu Hafs Al Keswani, the Islamist leader in Daraa, and others.
 “‘The reason the regime released them at the beginning of the Syrian revolution was to complete the militarization of the uprising,’ said Naser, who defected in late 2012. ‘And to spur criminal acts so that revolution would become a criminal case and give the impression that the regime is fighting terrorists’ […] John Kerry, the outgoing secretary of state, said in November 2015 that ISIS ‘was created by Assad’ and by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom released al Qaeda prisoners in their respective countries. Assad’s aim was to tell the world, ‘It’s me or the terrorists.’”Most analysts, opposition thinkers and writers agree with this analysis.
My objection to this simple explanation is: the Assad regime achieved this goal within the first two years. There is a big question mark hovering over this. By 2013 Isis occupied large parts of Syria and Iraq. With the news dominating international media and Syrians fed up with the Islamists and foreign factions, the Assad regime had the justification it needed to end the armed rebellion and restore its control over Syria. As I will explain in the following points, the Assad regime did the exact opposite.
The different headquarters of the armed opposition stayed unmolested during the seven years of the militarized rebellion. Armed rebels grew in number in each small town or city center across the area controlled by the opposition. The factions of this opposition, led now by unknown foreigner fighters, occupied government buildings and schools and turned them into military buildings. These headquarters were always surrounded with armed vehicles. They were completely visible and could be easily monitored and observed. The Syrian and Russian aircraft were flying over these headquarters on a daily basis while their raids attacked the civilian hospitals, markets, childrens’ schools and houses