afrinpost – Special
The visit of the leaders of the first row of “Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham” (Al-Nusra) to Afrin, and the general address is coordination, and the result is more fighters to serve Turkey’s goals and plan.
Leaders of “Al-Nusra” in Afrin
The purpose of the visit of the leaders of the “Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham” (Al-Nusra) to Afrin cannot be understood within the usual news context, but rather to place it within the framework of the entirety of the Turkish plan and the instructions of its intelligence.
Two consecutive visits made by the Saudi “Abdullah Al-Muhaysini” accompanied by “Musleh Al-Olayan” to Afrin, to meet the leaders of Failaq al-Sham militia close to Ankara, and after them the visit of the so-called “Abdul-Zraq Al-Mahdi,” who met the leader of the “Suleiman Shah” militia (Al-Amshat), This trio were among those blessed for HTS’s announcement of its establishment in a statement they issued with others on the day of its announcement itself on January 28, 2017, and the purpose of this visit was to establish a joint “operations room” that would serve Turkish interests and their battles. This is in line with its efforts to form a unified military body, which it hopes will join HTS either directly or after dissolving itself.
A joint operating room?
The purpose of these two visits is to establish a joint “operations room” under Turkish administration to serve the Turkish interests. It is not surprising that a liberation committee is present in the areas occupied by Turkey. Rather, the evacuations of the Turkish observation posts in the countryside of Idlib and Aleppo lead to a redeployment in areas closer to the “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,” and thus Ankara’s efforts are directed towards acquiring more alternatives pending long battles. This is Ankara’s condition to float “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” and drop the description of terrorism from it, and to limit the description to groups that refused to disengage from al-Qaeda. This is why Al-Julani’s steps, which were described as pragmatism, his attempt to acquire the Syrian description, minimize foreign elements, and talk about the “Turkestan Party” showing flexibility in dealing with the Syrian issue, bearing in its connotations the meaning of the Uyghur settlement in Syria, that is, the inclusion of demographic change on the entire border strip with Syria.
The visit coincides not with the Turkish aggression against Ain Issa despite the importance and gravity of the event, but rather with the continuous Turkish efforts for months to form a unified military body, to which Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham could be included and thus be floated and drop its name from the lists of international terrorism.
A meeting was held on 12/8/2020, in the city of Azaz, between Turkish officers and leaders of the mercenary factions affiliated with Turkey, during which preparation for an attack on the areas of Manbij, Ain Issa and Tal Tamr was discussed. In conjunction with a large convoy of Turkish forces heading to the countryside of Manbij, coming from three axes (al-Bab, al-Raai and Jarablus).
afrinpost website, quoting its sources, stated that Turkish officers held a meeting on 12/21/2020 in the old Saraya building with leaders of four mercenary militias, namely (al-Shamiya Front, Sultan Murad, Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sharqiya).
A call for unity
In the context of the call for unity also, Abu al-Fath al-Farghali, one of the leaders of the first order in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, directed an application through his channel on the Telegram at the beginning of this month, December, to what he called the public reconciliation in the Levant, saying that A look at the situation in the Levantine area now realizes that it is in urgent need of a general reconciliation between all its components.
Al-Farghali considered that this is the only solution to continue, progress and achieve the higher goal, otherwise the price will be paid dearly, indicating that all, without exception, must make painful concessions for the sake of reconciliation, no matter how painful the past and the present is black as he put it.
The Syrian branch of al-Qaeda (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham / Jabhat al-Nusra) seeks to strengthen its overt presence in the Syrian areas that are under Turkish occupation after years of clandestine work in those areas.
