Wars can make strange bedfellows out of erstwhile enemies but if Western-backed Syrian rebels are to be believed, the Syrian conflict has thrown up one of the strangest ever wartime alliances, featuring Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and jihadists such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the militant Sunni leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) who wants to shape and rule over an emirate stretching across the Levant.

The allegation would seem to be as fantastic as something dreamed up by the scriptwriters of Homeland. After all, Assad and al-Baghdadi are members of warring religious sects from the main schism in Islam—the Syrian president is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam, and al-Baghdadi is a Sunni who excoriates Shiites and Alawites.

The Syrian civil war has certainly strengthened al-Baghdadi and he is not alone in benefiting—al Qaeda is enjoying a renaissance on the back of Syria’s conflict. But according to Western-backed rebels, the rise of al Qaeda in Syria is all part of Assad’s dark plan. According to rebel spokesman Munzer Akbik, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are “regime-made terrorist organizations” that “the Assad regime inserted into the body of the revolution.”