Before they became isis yes

The CIA supported fsa till trump stopped it in 2017

They did airstrike the Al Qaeda parts of the fsa before 2017

Good thing they got rid of AQ, a massive islamist anti US force in syria wouldve sucked

They still do it now

Most of the rebels are still jihadists

And they are all holed up in idlib

Maybe in the Turkish conquered areas too

There are no "moderate" rebels in syria there are just anti american islamists and anti assad islamists

There used to be moderate rebels

Turkey is likely propping up the FSA with material

Apparently I heard that assad released lots of jihadists in 2011-2012 to discredit the opposition

Could be false or true, truth in war is muddled

Those claims were made by a lawyer who was imprisoned by assad's government

There is additional information from unnamed sources but it is conflicting on the dates and times

The main question is why would assad strengthen the power of his opponents prior to the start of a civil war?

Yea

I found this
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/assad-deliberately-release-islamist-prisoners-militarize-radicalize-syrian-uprising/

They furthermore claim that Assad's government directly armed these extremists

Dont trust this 100% but I guess it's a good read

TLDR the claims cant be independently verified

Holy hell that article is long

Yes, but thankfully most of it is spent repeating the same points

assad released a large number of prisoners as part of negotiations with the opposition

some of those were islamist extermists

some were members of the brotherhood

and i assume some were assorted political prisoners/actual criminals

It has become very popular among the media to view dicators as idiots whose primary goal in life is slaughtering their own citizens

I think this theory is an off shoot of that mindset

Not to say that assad is above killing, torturing or imprisoning people to keep his regime alive

But like the gas attacks, the presented theory does not make logical sense from the point of view of the supposed perpetrator

And with the gas attacks there is evidence that the rebels/ISIS have chemical weapons

Anyways Syria is quite calm other than constant skirmishes between Syrian govt and rebels

And Kurds killing isis

Syria is apparently going to deploy their S300 air defenses soon

Which means that they could shoot down Israeli planes

israel shouldnt try anything once that happens

They know the stakes and with the US pulling out theyll lose most of their bravado

I was being sarcastic lol. Just the israel treatment is bizzare. Even the far left hates them as well, and im not talking about the pro louise farrakhan types, in talking about tankies

Israel is our greatest ally has been used unironically by some politicians

I stand with Israel