Syria’s new rulers have installed some imported muscle including Uighurs, a Jordanian, and a Turk in the country’s armed forces, as Damascus tries to shape a patchwork of rebel groups into a professional military, two Syrian sources said.
The move to give official roles, including senior ones, to several jihadists may alarm some foreign governments and Syrian citizens fearful about the new administration’s intentions, despite its pledges not to export Islamic revolution and to rule with tolerance toward Syria’s large minority groups.
A Syrian government spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment on the thinking behind the appointments.
The sources said that out of a total of almost 50 military roles announced by the Defense Ministry on Sunday, at least six had gone to foreigners.
Rooters was not able to independently verify the nationalities of the individuals appointed.
Thousands of Sunni Moslem foreigners joined Syria’s rebels early in the 13-year civil war to fight against the rule of Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
and the Iran-backed Shiite militias that supported him. Some imported muscle formed their own gangs while others joined established formations such as Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
as it rampaged across Iraq and Syria, briefly declaring a so-called caliphate before being routed by US and Iran-backed forces.
Other groups of foreign jihadists joined Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...(HTS), which disavowed previous links to al-Qaeda and Islamic State and fought bloody battles against them before going on to spearhead the lightning advance that toppled Assad on December 8.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS-leader-turned de facto ruler of Syria, has purged dozens of foreign jihadi fighters as part of a campaign to Syrianize and moderate his group.
In remarks broadcast on Sunday, Sharaa said the new Syria "cannot be run by the mentality of groups and militias."
Syria’s new rulers, drawn mainly from HTS, have indicated that imported muscle and their families may be given Syrian citizenship and be allowed to stay in the country because of their contributions to the fight against Assad.
The Defense Ministry on Sunday announced 49 appointments to the army that included leaders of key Syrian armed factions. Among them were several imported muscle, three given the rank of brigadier-general and at least three others the rank of colonel, a Syrian military source said.
’TOKEN OF RECOGNITION’
"This is a small token of recognition for the sacrifices Islamist jihadists gave to our struggle for freedom from Assad’s oppression," an HTS source told Rooters.
Chinese Uighur Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, also known as Zahid and the commander of the separatist Turkistan Islamic Party’s (TIP) forces in Syria, was appointed a brigadier-general, a TIP statement said and the Syrian military source confirmed.
Two other Uighur fighters, Mawlan Tarsoun Abdussamad and Abdulsalam Yasin Ahmad, were given the rank of colonel, said the TIP statement published on its website, congratulating them and the Uighur community on the appointments.
All the names appear in Sunday’s Defense Ministry announcement, though the nationalities are not included.
The TIP is thought to have hundreds of fighters in Syria and aims to establish an Islamic State in parts of China and central Asia, where there is a large Uighur Moslem population.
Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uighurs, a mainly Moslem ethnic minority that numbers around 10 million in the western region of Xinjiang, including the mass use of forced labor in camps. Beijing denies any abuses.
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese foreign ministry.
China labels the TIP a terrorist organization responsible for plots to attack overseas Chinese targets. Beijing has said TIP "gravely threatens" China’s interests and security overseas and that combating the group was China’s "core concern" in its counter-terrorism effort.
Ottoman Turkish citizen Omar Mohammed Jaftashi and Jordanian citizen Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Khatib were also made brigadier-generals, the Syrian military source and the HTS source said.
Abdul Jashari, an ethnically Albanian fighter also known as Abu Qatada al-Albani, was appointed colonel, the military source said. Jashari heads the Albanian jihadist group Xhemati Alban and was designated a terrorist by the US Treasury in 2016.
Egyptian Alaa Mohammed Abdel-Baqi was also given a military rank, the source said.
Egypt’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Xhemati Alban: Albanian Snipers in Syria
December 8, 2024
Excerpted from a much longer post witht he usual Grey Dynamics information.
[GreyDynamics] Xhemati Alban is a Sunni jihadist militant group operating in the Idlib Governorate in Syria. Garnering attention for its formidable “sniper squad”, they have been active in spreading propaganda detailing the unit’s exploits. Linked to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) they have been involved in several operations together. Comprised of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and North Macedonia, the group’s current membership numbers are unknown but believed to not exceed two dozen members. Despite claiming establishment in 2012, the group’s earliest piece of propaganda dates back to 2017.The group’s fighters are relatively unadorned when compared to contemporary modern fighting forces and their propaganda pieces are usually without patches of any kind. However, the group does have one patch of note which is that of Albanian Tactical which is a further subgroup within Xhemati Alban. Albanian Tactical offers tactical training in line with other mercenary or contract organisations in the region such as Yurtugh Tactical and Muhojir Tactical. This has allowed them to frame themselves as a contract enterprise and not simply a militia/terror group.
Xhemati Alban, which translates to “Albanian Group,” comprises ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, and the Presovo Valley in Serbia. Although the group claims to have originated in 2012, reports indicate that its active operations began around 2017, coinciding with its involvement in conflicts such as those in Ras al-Ayn, Abu al-Duhur Airbase, and Jisr al-Shughur.
Under the leadership of Abu Qatada al-Albani (Abdul Jashari), born in 1976 in Skopje, North Macedonia, the group appointed its military leader, as designated by former Jabhat al-Nusra leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani in 2014. Al-Albani’s association with Jabhat al-Nusra led to his inclusion in the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List in late 2016. Notably, al-Albani also serves as a close military advisor to the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
HTS appoints Maysaa Sabrine to lead central bank, first woman to hold position
[IsraelTimes] Syria’s new rulers have appointed Maysaa Sabrine, formerly a deputy governor of the Syrian central bank, to lead the institution, a senior Syrian official says.
Sabrine does not immediately respond to a request for comment.
She will be the first woman to lead the institution in its more than 70-year history, replacing Mohammed Issam Hazime who was appointed governor in 2021 by now-toppled president Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian FM says he accepted invitation to visit Saudi Arabia
[IsraelTimes] Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, appointed by the new rulers, says on X that he has accepted an invitation from his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah to visit, in what would be his first foreign trip.
Related:
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2024-12-12 Syria after the collapse. What next?
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2023-08-22 China Turns to Taliban to Control ETIM: Exclusive on Bid to Woo Guv of Afghanistan’s Badakshan
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2023-08-13 NATO-calibre weapons being transferred to ISIL-K by Taliban, Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like TTP: UN report
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2024-12-12 Syria after the collapse. What next?
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2023-08-22 China Turns to Taliban to Control ETIM: Exclusive on Bid to Woo Guv of Afghanistan’s Badakshan
Turkistan Islamic Party: 2023-08-13 NATO-calibre weapons being transferred to ISIL-K by Taliban, Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like TTP: UN report
Zawahiri
[RFE/RL] After almost a year of silence, Ayman al-Zawahiri has released an audio message swearing allegiance to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur, the new Taliban chief.
[IraqiNews.com] On Wednesday, Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced, that the ISIS commander of al-Sharqat and al-Alam areas has been killed alongside 12 of his key aides in a missile strike in Salahuddin.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir