Jihadists, rebel groups, Kurds... Who’s who in the offensive against the Syrian regime

In one of the few interviews given by Abu Mohammad al-Julani to the foreign press, in April 2021, the leader of the armed group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said: “First and foremost, this region [the Syrian province of Idlib] does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America. This region is not a staging ground for executing foreign jihad.” In conversation with American reporter Martin Smith, Al-Julani was thus trying to distance himself from the terror that the jihadist group Islamic State (ISIS), with which HTS shares roots in the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, had instated in the region for five years.

Al-Julani sought to reinforce, in the eyes of Western public opinion, what he has done in public speeches and other meetings with journalists — the first with Al Jazeera — regarding what he insisted is his fundamental objective: to fight the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Three years later, HTS has led one of the largest advances of rebel forces towards Aleppo, the country’s second city and one of the symbols of the anti-government revolt that began in March 2011.

Al-Julani and HTS

To understand this effort at “pragmatism,” as described by Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute in Washington, one of the greatest experts on HTS, we must look back to the beginnings of the Syrian Civil War. Months after Syrian citizens of diverse origins, from the countryside to the city, from qualified professionals to the unschooled, took up arms around what they called the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and managed to defeat the regime in several points in the west and northwest of the Arab country, the porous borders began to let through veteran combatants, mainly from neighboring Iraq, valuable in combat but with an integrationalist agenda. Through these cracks, in 2012, Al Qaeda slipped in to establish its Syrian branch. It soon followed two paths: that of Al-Julani at the head of the Al-Nusra Front, and that of the Iraqi jihadist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the then Islamic State of Iraq.

Al-Julani, a Syrian national born in Saudi Arabia sometime between 1975 and 1979 according to some biographies, wanted to distance himself from Al-Baghdadi and his project for a caliphate, which was still in its infancy, and broke off their alliance in April 2013. Three years later, he would do the same with Al-Qaeda and its leader, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri. While ISIS was setting up a terror machine in the north and east of the country and a cell to carry out attacks abroad, Al-Julani focused his men’s activities on the war against the Syrian army, other rival factions — including Al-Baghdadi’s units — and on the conquest of territory around Idlib, Hama, and Aleppo. In January 2017, Al-Julani forged new alliances with armed rebel groups including Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Liwa al-Haqq and Jaysh al-Sunna to form HTS, which is currently leading the offensive against the Assad regime. The lowest estimates of combatants range from 12,000 to 15,000. The highest estimates exceed 30,000.

HTS is not ISIS, but it is not exempt from complaints about the repression carried out under its control. Both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch have accused the armed group of arbitrary arrests, abuses, and torture. Among the complainants were British activist Tauqir Sharif and American-Syrian reporter Bilal Abdul Kareem. However, Al-Julani has been able to convey a message of moderation in relation to ISIS: he has built government structures in the region under his control — of around four million inhabitants, a third of them displaced from other areas of the country — and a powerful army of fighters with a military academy and special forces units.

HTS is governed by Islam, but as Al-Julani has said on occasion, “not like ISIS or Saudi Arabia.” According to The Washington Post in January 2022, after speaking to a resident who had been targeted by the armed group’s repression, the morality police officers who once operated “with impunity, separating couples and harassing women for their clothing” were no longer visible on the streets.

Syrian National Army

In a public appearance in May 2023, Al-Julani told followers who were better prepared than ever that the “revolution” had reached its peak to march on Aleppo. A year and a half later, on Wednesday, HTS, leading the Fatah al-Mubin operation, launched a lightning offensive in coordination with another alliance of armed forces, the Syrian National Army (SNA), leading the Fajr al-Hurriya operation. The SNA, a coalition of armed rebel groups including the Free Syrian Army — which was formed by regular army defectors to protect civilians during the anti-Assad revolution 13 years ago — Ahrar al-Sham and the Levant Front, maintains areas of northwestern Syria under its control with the support of Turkey. It is from this area of the country, from towns such as Al Bab, which has passed through the hands of almost all the armed factions, that the SNA has launched its offensive towards the M-4, a key highway connecting the provinces of Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor, in the east.

The SNA, which according to some estimates has at least 25,000 uniformed personnel, including Arabs and Turkmens (some of whom have travelled to support Ankara’s allies such as Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh), has followed a path parallel to that of Turkish interests in Syria; it has been Ankara’s spearhead against ISIS, first during Operation Euphrates Shield (2016), and later against the Kurdish militias in Operation Olive Branch (2018).

This amalgam of more or less radical rebel forces — journalistic investigations blame militiamen under its command for the assassination of the Syrian Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf in October 2019 — has positioned itself as a military force, with sometimes delicate relations with the main opposition umbrella, known as the Syrian Interim Government, with Abdurrahman Mustafa as president. This political entity, which brings together the main formations at the head of the anti-Assad revolt, has had the support of Ankara, from where it has operated in the last decade, since the beginning of hostilities.

Another prominent member of this opposition organization, Hadi al-Bahra, president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, singled out one of the allies in the ranks of the Syrian regime on Monday: Hezbollah. “Due to the war in Lebanon and the decrease in Hezbollah forces, the [Assad] regime has less support.” The fighters of the Lebanese militia and its Shia ally Iran, a fundamental supporter of Damascus along with Russia, have suffered constant bombardment by the Israeli Air Force over the past year.

Kurds of Syria

Kurdish forces may also play a significant role in the current rebel offensive in western Syria. Since the beginning of the revolution and subsequent civil war, militias of Kurdish origin have been able to maintain a certain balance in order not to join the war against Damascus, without falling squarely on the side of the regime. Thus, the United States, 10 years ago, decided to train and arm Kurdish militiamen who, together with Arab fighters, formed the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), at the forefront of the war against ISIS. It was this group that, supported by American aircraft, defeated the jihadist group on the ground in the Battle of Baguz in March 2019, signalling the end of the caliphate.

The SDF now faces on its western flank the risk that the Turkish-backed coalition offensive will try to seize a larger chunk of land in the northwest. The Syrian regime had also handed over some key points to the SDF’s control, such as Aleppo’s international airport, which has finally passed into the hands of rebel forces who have entered the country’s former economic capital. The current offensive also threatens to encourage ISIS sleeper cells — somewhat more awake in recent months — in the eastern strip (Deir ez-Zor). According to the latest ISIS threat monitoring report presented to the UN Security Council, the group maintains a force of around 3,000 fighters on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border. It is in Syria, however, that it maintains its central command.

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