Foreign jihadists have been appointed in senior positions in the new Syrian military, which is now led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of al-Qaeda that led the offensive that ousted former President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian sources told Reuters that the foreign fighters appointed to the military include Uyghurs, a Jordanian, a Turk, and an Albanian. “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 the media outlet.
Among the Uyghurs is Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, the commander of the Turkistan Islamic Party’s (TIP) forces in Syria. The TIP’s stated goal is to create an Islamic State in China’s western Xinjiang region. Khudaberdi was named a brigadier general in the Syrian military, and two other Uyghur fighters were appointed colonels.
Sources told Reuters that Turkish citizen Omar Mohammed Jaftashi and Jordanian citizen Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Khatib were also made brigadier-generals. Abdul Jashari, an Albanian fighter who was designated a terrorist by the US Treasury Department, was made a colonel.
HTS is still designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization, but the Biden administration has celebrated its takeover of Syria. The US has also made clear it’s willing to work with the new government and its de facto leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who has been going by his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Earlier this month, Barbara Leaf, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, met with Julani and announced the US was removing a $10 million bounty on his head. Julani, a former al-Qaeda leader, appointed other HTS members in senior positions of the “transitional government” and has said elections in Syria probably won’t happen for at least four years.
