HTS’ man on the inside: al-Qahtani and the al-Fatah Brigade
The al-Fatah Brigade is an opposition group from Tel Rifaat. In 2013, it formed the North Operations Room with Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra Front (now HTS), the Tawhid Brigade (the precursor to Ahrar al-Tawhid), the Northern Storm Brigade (members of which formed the Azaz Falcons Brigade), and other Syrian opposition groups in order to fight Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) forces in Afrin. In February 2016, the Brigade was dislodged from Tel Rifaat and the Menagh airbase by the YPG, which controls the town to this day. Subsequently, the al-Fatah Brigade left the operations room and joined the Levant Front a year later.
Radwan Qandal (also known as ‘Abu Yahya’), a Shura council member for the Third Corps, has headed the faction since 2018. According to SyriaTV, Abu Yahya and another Shura council member, Tawfiq Assaf (or ‘Abu Tawfiq’), have lobbied for Levant Front factions to switch their allegiance to HTS. Reportedly, they have done so under the leadership of Abu Maria al-Qahtani, a high-ranking commander within HTS. According to the opposition news site, al-Qahtani specifically targets local factions for conversion. He has enticed groups with promises of $100 increases on the meagre salaries Levant Front militants receive from Turkey (which oftentimes arrive late), as well as vehicles and medium-range weaponry. Tawfiq Assaf has also led attempts to take Qitmeh on behalf of HTS.
Though how precisely the Shahba Gathering was formed is not yet known, it is likely a result of al-Qahtani’s strategy and internal lobbying, as a majority of member militias defected from Levant Front. Nevertheless, some outlets have reported that al-Fatah Brigade stepped away from the new formation under Turkish pressure.
A successful convert: Nour al-Din al-Zenki
Nour al-Din al-Zenki has had a fraught relationship with HTS. As mentioned before, this west Aleppo faction did from part of a joint operations room with the al-Nusra Front. However, the two groups split in 2017 and, in 2019, the HTS attacked Zenki members, nearly destroying the group entirely. What remained split off and integrated into a variety of SNA groups, including the Levant Front. It was this splinter group, the so-called Kataeb Bloc, which co-founded the Shahba Gathering.
The defection occurred under the leadership of Ahmed Rizq, who is another partner of HTS’ al-Qahtani. Rizq also harbours close ties to the Ahrar Awlan faction, having pushed members of the National Front for Liberation, a precursor to the SNA established by al-Zenki and Ahrar al-Sham, to join the pro-HTS group in order to cement their control over smuggling networks in al-Bab, SyriaTV reports. On Twitter, Rizq has recently made veiled threats against SNA factions which have not positioned themselves clearly against a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement.
Hassano incident, Azaz Falcons and Northern Storm Brigade
The Northern Storm Brigade is a major member of the Levant Front in and around Azaz. Six groups from within Northern Storm defected to Shahba Gathering. These included three groups led by Abu Saleh Kino, Abu Yunes ash-Shawi, and Sheikh Hatim Issa, respectively, which together formed the Azaz Falcons Brigade, as well as the Martyr Ibrahim Radwan Battalion, the Masaab Abu az-Zuber Battalion, and the Muthanna Battalion. The latter is likely the same or a re-shuffled version of the al-Muthanna Ibn Haritha Battalion, which was organized under the al-Fatah Brigade in the early years of the war.
It did not take long for these groups and the Northern Storm Brigade to clash. A dispute at the Utad Mulham camp, 3km northeast of Azaz, in early April between the Muthanna Battalion, and IDPs from Hayyan village, north of Aleppo, spread into nearby Azaz city. The violence that followed shut down the city, home to around 110,000 people, and led to the deaths of three Northern Storm and one Levant Front fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Connections between this group and HTS soon emerged as well. Hassano’s brother is the Azaz director of the Mulham Team, an NGO operating in opposition-held areas of Syria. Besides camps, a housing project and an orphanage, Mulham Team is also active in HTS-controlled Idlib – particularly, in Barisha and Turanda. More striking yet, Halab Today TV, a local news station, reported accusations by Azaz residents that Mulham’s camps in the region were being guarded by HTS fighters.
HTS, Turkey and future of northern Aleppo
Though the jihadist group has not endorsed the Shahba Gathering formation, HTS’ fingerprints are found over all of its member militias. HTS has attempted to consolidate its control over all opposition-held areas. It remains present throughout south and west Afrin, despite a supposed withdrawal late last year.
Turkish-occupied north Aleppo is at a crossroads: the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pushing for normalization with al-Assad; Damascus demands a full withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syria. This would leave the SNA out to dry. Moreover, national elections next month may bring about a new government in Ankara, one which has already ruled out cooperating with Islamists in Syria, and which may abandon the proxy militias altogether.
The HTS and its allies have thus launched a quiet campaign to discredit Turkey. According to SyriaTV, HTS and Ahrar al-Sham have created Telegram channels to denounce members of Turkey’s intelligence services and have attempted to incite tribes against Turkey as well. Turkey’s drone strike against al-Mousa has only played into their hands. Tellingly, despite Ankara’s past use of HTS to keep the Levant Front in check, Turkey has pressured Shahba Gathering’s constituent militias to leave the HTS-controlled coalition.
The fact that nearly all Shahba Gathering groups are from the area between Aleppo and Azaz could also point towards HTS’ attempts to establish a local proxy, one which could take over territory controlled by the Levant Front – particularly Azaz, which currently acts as a chokepoint for the rest of north Aleppo.
However, many of the groups also harbour deep resentment against Kurds, given the YPG’s attacks against Tel Rifaat and Menagh. This belies al-Jolani’s image as the protector of Afrin’s Kurds, which the HTS leader had attempted to craft after the February 6 earthquake and a series of murders during the Kurdish Newroz celebrations in the city of Jinderes.
Yet one should be careful to not attach too much importance to regional power-plays. “Individual commander allegiances and competition are largely what determines why certain brigades side with HTS or the Third Legion,” Alexander McKeever, a researcher focused on opposition-held Aleppo, tells North Press. North Aleppo can be a claustrophobic space, in which regional, village-level rivalries can lead to inter-party warfare.
Take the village of Anadan, 12km north of Aleppo. This village, home to only around 12,000 souls before the war, is the birthplace of both Ahmed Rizq and Mu’tasim Hassano (and his brother). It was liberated from government control in 2012 by Liwa al-Tawheed and the al-Fatah Brigade with the help of Hassano’s Muthanna Brigade. It would come under the control of Ahrar al-Sham and, later, al-Nusra Front, in 2017. According to Kurdish media, a relative of Rizq, also from Anadan, even defected to the YPG. Today, it is a ghost town controlled by Syrian government forces.