Syrian rebels began planning a year ago for the military assault that has overthrown Bashar Al Assad’s regime. According to the revelations of Abu Hassan Al Hamwi, military chief of the main rebel group – the Levant Liberation Organization (formerly Al Qaeda in Syria) – it was a very disciplined operation, in which it developed its own drone unit and It required close coordination of opposition groups throughout the country.
After the fall of the Al Assad regime, whose family had been in the Syrian government for 54 years, Al Hamwi (40) has given his first interview to foreign media detailing how his group, the Levant Liberation Organization (HTS, for its acronym in Arabic), communicated from northwest Syria with the rebels in the south to create a joint operations room that would allow Damascus to be surrounded from both fronts.
Dubbed “deterrence of aggression,” the operation to overthrow Al Assad began planning a year ago. But according to Al Hamwi, HTS had been preparing for years. In 2019, they began to develop the military doctrine that would allow them to transform a heterogeneous and disorganized group of men who came from opposition and jihadist groups into a disciplined combat force.
“In the last campaign [agosto de 2019]in which we lost a significant part of territory, all the revolutionary factions understood what the main risk was; The fundamental problem was the absence of a single leadership and a single control for the battle,” said Al Hamwi, who has been military chief of the HTS for five years, from Jableh, the regime’s former stronghold.
The insurgents, cornered in Idlib
The Syrian regime’s 2019 offensive against opposition forces in the northwest managed to drive loosely linked factions back to Idlib province. In the spring of 2020, a final battle left the rebels confined to a small northwestern pocket, with Türkiye negotiating a ceasefire on behalf of the opposition. In that impasse with the soldiers of the regime is where they remained until this month of December.
HTS realized that to overthrow the regime it first had to bring order to the multitude of insurgent factions that had retreated to Idlib. He subdued groups that refused to unite under his leadership. He also fought against groups like Hurras al Din, related to Al Qaeda and opposed to the more pragmatic Islamism of HTS. In a short time, HTS became the main authority in northwestern Syria.
With the political command gradually unifying, Al Hamwi dedicated himself to training fighters and developing a comprehensive military doctrine. “We studied the enemy thoroughly, analyzed their day and night tactics, and used that knowledge to develop our own forces,” he explained. Formed by insurgents, the group gradually became a disciplined fighting force with military units, branches, and security forces.
HTS also began generating its own weapons, vehicles and ammunition. They knew they had to be creative to get the most out of their limited resources. They had the Al Assad regime in front of them, better armed, with an air force and backed by Russia and Iran.
A drone unit was created, in which engineers, chemists and mechanics participated. “We unified their knowledge and established clear objectives; we needed reconnaissance drones, attack drones and suicide drones, prioritizing range and endurance,” Al Hamwi said. Drone production began in 2019, he added.
The last HTS drone was a suicide model that Al Hamwi himself named Shahin, which in Arabic means falcon, “for its precision and power.” In December, the Shahin was deployed for the first time against regime forces, with devastating success: the cheap and effective aircraft demonstrated that it could disable military artillery vehicles.
Coordination with southern armed factions
A year ago, HTS began sending messages to the southern rebels and advising them on creating a joint operations room. Southern Syria had been under regime control since 2018 and the rebels had been forced to go underground, although there was intermittent fighting. Much of the southern military leadership had gone into exile in Jordan, from where they maintained contact with their men.
With the help of HTS, it was possible to create an operations room that brought together the commanders of some 25 rebel groups in the south to coordinate their fighters, with each other and with those of HTS in the north. The plan was for HTS and its allies to approach Damascus from the north, and the others to do so from the south, for a later union of the two groups in the Syrian capital.
In late November, the group decided the time had come. Above all, they wanted to avoid accentuating the trend started by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, regional powers that after years of diplomatic isolation normalized their relations with the Al Assad regime. Another key was resisting the intensification of bombing in northwest Syria.
Finally, HTS saw a window of opportunity in the difficult time that Al Assad’s international allies were going through. Russia, which had been the main provider of air support, had become bogged down in Ukraine. And Iran’s Shiite militiamen and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, the fiercest of Assad’s ground troops, were on the decline due to their confrontation with Israel.
HTS launched its operation and on November 29 entered Aleppo. Hezbollah fighters tried to defend the city, but quickly withdrew. The group was amazed by the speed with which Syria’s second most important city had fallen, the same one that Al Assad had recaptured from the rebels in 2016, after four years of fighting.
“We had the conviction, supported by historical precedents, that Damascus could not fall until Aleppo fell, the strength of the Syrian revolution was concentrated in the north; Once Aleppo was liberated, we believed that we could advance south, towards Damascus,” said Al Hamwi.
After the fall of Aleppo, the rebels’ advance through the northwest seemed unstoppable. Four days later, they took over the city of Hama and on December 7 they began their offensive on Homs. Taking the city was a matter of hours.
According to Abu Hamzeh, one of the leaders of the Damascus Liberation Operations Room, the plan was for the southern rebels to wait for Homs to fall before starting their own rebellion in the south. But enthusiasm caused them to start earlier and quickly expel the regime forces from Daraa. They arrived in Damascus before HTS. On December 8, Bashar Al Assad fled the country.
Al Hamwi is an agricultural engineer who graduated from Damascus University. The Al Assad regime forced him to move to Idlib with his family. He will now move on to play a role in the new interim government. Building a new country is not an easy task, a statement with which Al Hamwi said he agrees. One of the fears of religious minorities is that the Islamist group will impose its own dogmas.
“We affirm that minorities in Syria are part of the nation and have the right to practice their rites, their education and their worship like all Syrian citizens,” said Al Hamwi. “The regime sowed division and our intention, to the extent possible, is to end these divisions.”
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