18 December 2024

Unified war room & new drones: Syrian rebel commander reveals military doctrine that toppled Assad regime


Top military commander of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham revealed that the rebel group began planning the military assault to topple Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's regime a year ago. In his first interview with foreign media, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of the HTS military wing, said that the group conducted a highly disciplined operation in which a new drone unit was deployed and where there was close coordination between opposition groups around the country.

HTS led the operation from the country's northwest and communicated with the rebel group operating in the south to encircle the country's capital, Damascus. During his conversation with The Guardian, Hamwi said that the planning to topple the regime started a year ago, the groups were preparing for a coup like this for years.

Hamwi noted that since 2019, HTS has been developing a military doctrine that it used to turn fighters coming from "disparate, disorganised opposition and jihadist groups into a disciplined fighting force." “After the last campaign [August 2019], during which we lost significant territory, all revolutionary factions realised the critical danger – the fundamental problem was the absence of unified leadership and control over battle,” the 40-year-old military commander said in an interview in Jableh.

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