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Syria Appoints Some Foreign Islamist Fighters to Its Military, Sources Say

Khaled Brigade, a part of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), hold a military parade, after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was ousted, in Damascus, Syria, Dec. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Syria‘s new rulers have installed some foreign fighters including Uyghurs, 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 towards 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.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the nationalities of the individuals appointed.

Thousands of Sunni Muslim foreigners joined Syria‘s rebels early in the 13-year civil war to fight against the rule of Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-backed Shi’ite militias who supported him, giving the conflict a sectarian overtone.

Some foreign fighters formed their own armed groups while others joined established formations such as Islamic State 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 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 Dec. 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 foreign fighters 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 foreign fighters, 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 Reuters.

Chinese Uyghur militant 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 Uyghur 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 Uyghur 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 Uyghur Muslim population.

Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim 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.

“The East Turkestan Islamic Movement is a terrorist organization listed by the UN Security Council,” Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, told a regular press conference on Tuesday, using China’s name for TIP.

“The international community should fully recognize the violent nature of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and resolutely crack down on it,” she added.

China also 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.

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 head the Albanian jihadist group Xhemati Alban and was designated a terrorist by the U.S. 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.

The post Syria Appoints Some Foreign Islamist Fighters to Its Military, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

i24 NewsFinance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”

Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”

The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.

“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”

The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30

A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 NewsThe Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.

During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.

The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”

Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.

“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”

The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

i24 NewsOver 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.

Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.

The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.

The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.

The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.

The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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