SYRIA

The options facing President Donald Trump in dealing with a deadly serious situation in Syria are terrifyingly dangerous. The options open to the American president include strategic air strikes, a possible ground invasion, additional aid for pro-West rebels or the backing of non-ISIS jihadis. It is to this last option I wish to clarify and expand upon.

Most non-Islamic State jihadist groups fighting in Syria have been keen from the outset of the civil war to show they have no intention of spreading jihad into the West.

The main Al-Qaeda-affiliated branch, Al-Nusra Front, even changed its name in a vain bid to avoid Western arms embargos.

It is true that when not fighting Syrian regime forces they are battling ISIS – while denouncing the later through their propaganda organs as Islamic miscreants.

Given this mutual loathing of ISIS and the Syrian regime, at first glance it is understandable that many Western politicians, as well as intelligence experts, have been eager to trumpet them as natural allies of the West.

However, for Mr Trump there will be two main problems when it comes to considering the wisdom of such advice. The first is that these groups are on the retreat on the battlefield, having been pounded by Russian airstrikes (in support of Assad) and repeatedly overrun by the better-trained, more heavily armed and fanatical ISIS fighters.

Then there are the lessons of the not-so-distant past: while such radical Islamist groups often swear, hand on heart, that they have no beef with the West, history suggests such declarations should be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

The most obvious example is the Mujahideen – or ‘freedom fighters’ – who, like the Islamist terrorists in Syria today, were funded and trained by the CIA in the Eighties to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. They achieved that – and then quickly morphed into the Taliban.