Afrinpost – Special
Last Friday, it was announced that a new armed organization had been formed in the Afrin region, which is occupied by Turkish forces and the militia of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The city of Afrin witnessed a military parade with cars carrying heavily-armed elements that roamed the main streets in the occupied city of Afrin, and the convoy of military vehicles ended to a park, where the gathering took place, and amid cheering and jihadist Islamic slogans and amplification, a militia in the name of the “Free Syrian Movement” was formed. The new militia is led by the commander of al-Suqour Squad, called “Dedan Hassan al-Kili”. The militia, as reported, includes (28) thousand armed men.
One of the leaders of the new militia, called (Hassan Abu Alaa), said: We held a military parade for a faction that was announced in Afrin and its countryside under the name of the Free Syria Movement and it included all the Syrian segments (Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen). He added, “We are coordinating with the National Army without being subordinate to it and we are supported by Turkey, and our new formation includes a battalion for women, and our goal is to fight the Syrian regime, Kurdish separatist parties, and those outside the scope of the Syrian revolution,” as he described it.
Formation of the militia is a Turkish maneuver:
And while the militia leaders claim that they are independent and do not belong to the so-called “Syrian National Army of the Syrian-Muslim Brotherhood Coalition”. However, it is unrealistic to create a military entity without direct instructions from the Turkish occupation authorities,
Even if the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has stated that the new formation is directly affiliated with the Turkish intelligence. It does not fall under the wing of the “National Army” supported by Ankara. The matter does not depart from the framework of Ankara’s efforts to contain international criticism and international human rights and media reports that documented human rights violations in the occupied Afrin region, a maneuver by Ankara to demonstrate a new military faction that has no violations against record. In fact, what Ankara is doing is just a process of dismantling militias on the ground and reformulating them with new names, to reset their structures and control mechanisms, in an effort to spare them responsibility for the violations and crimes committed against the region and its people.
Ahrar Syria is an old militia
Certainly, it was intentional to include the name of Syria in the name of the militia, as opposed to the militias that used the names of the Ottoman sultans and Islamic names, but this name was used in the first years of the Syrian crisis, by a militia that practiced looting and kidnapping of people and dismantling the factories of Leramun area and transferring them to Turkey. And it has participated in most of the battles for the city of Aleppo and its northern countryside.
In August 2012, it was announced in the neighborhoods of al-Hulak, al-Sha’ar, and al-Sakhour, and the town of Andan, the formation of a militia called the “Free Syria Brigade,” which had 1,000 armed men, and its first nucleus consisted of three main brigades: the “Andan Martyrs Brigade” and the “Free Andan Brigade”, led by Ahmed Afash, and the “Mountain Martyrs Brigade” led by Muhammad Ghada. The first appearance of these brigades was in the battles of Anadan against the regime forces, who tried to storm the town of Andan on 3/25/2012, and Anadan left full control of the regime on 7/19/2012, and the militia participated in the battles of Huraytan, Hayat and Bayanun, and the militia population reached its peak 5 thousand armed.
The “Free Syria” militia, led by the so-called Ali Blo, a “general commander”. According to media sites, before the Syrian crisis, he worked as a “janitor” in a nightclub, and he was kidnapped on 5/8/2013, and his fate was not known and it was said that “ISIS kidnapped him,” While the so-called “Ahmed Afash” was a “military leader” of the militia, information indicates that before the crisis, he had many jobs, from a porter in construction work to a “compactor” digger, then a real estate broker and agricultural land, and besides the brokerage he carried out smuggling work.
The “Free Syria Brigade” militia joined the “Legitimate Authority in Aleppo”, which was first established by the “Jabhat al-Nusra”, and militias such as (Liwa al-Tawhid and the Ahrar al-Sham Movement) joined with it. It withdrew on October 12 2013 from the Bustan al-Qasr crossing.
Ahmed Afash received funding from Saudi sources, before turning to the stage of self-sufficiency through acts of theft, kidnappings, ransom demands, and the nickname “the big billionaire”, and upon being hit by a shrapnel on 3/4/2013 he moved to Mersin in Turkey for treatment.
Shelling Sheikh Maqsoud
On November 29 2015, the “Free Syria Brigade” militia began bombing the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, after it issued a statement on November 25 2015, in which it considered the neighborhood a “military zone” and demanded that civilians leave it. This came after an agreement between the so-called Afash, a Turkish officer, princes from Jabhat al-Nusra, and leaders from “Ahrar al-Sham” in the city of Aleppo, and the Turkish officer entered with 5 others in a coordination mission with various militias.
After its departure from the city of Aleppo, the militia took the name “Hazm Movement” and spread to Qubtan al-Jabal, Darat Azza, Kafr Hamra and the towns of the northern countryside of Aleppo, and it remained until Jabhat al-Nusra expelled it in 2016, and its members joined the ranks of the “Shamiya” militia, while the rest joined the “Hamzat”.
The announcement of the formation of the “Free Syria Movement” militia came against the backdrop of a dispute that erupted between the “alShamiya Front” militia and the “Suleiman Shah” militia (Al-Amshat), in recent times, gunmen were removed from the ranks of those militias, and they were joined to the formed militia.
