US ex-intelligence chief on ISIS rise

“Flynn believes the US government didn’t listen to his agency on purpose. “I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” the former DIA chief said.

The classified DIA report presented in August 2012 stated that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al- Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” being supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.”

The document, recently declassified through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), analyses the situation in Syria in the summer of 2012 and predicts: “If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The report warns of “dire consequences” of this scenario, because it would allow Al-Qaeda to regain its positions in Iraq and unify the jihadist Sunni forces in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against all other Muslim minorities they consider dissenters.”