Al-Mu'tasim Brigade

Last updated
Al-Mu'tasim Brigade
لواء المعتصم
Liwa al-Mu'tasim

Participant in the Syrian Civil War

Logo of the al-Moutasem Brigade.jpg
Logo of the al-Mu'tasim Brigade


Flag of the al-Moutasem Brigade.png
Flag of the Mu'tasim Brigade
Active 4 August 2015—present
Leaders
Headquarters Mare'
Area of operations Aleppo Governorate, Syria
Size
  • 500 (2016) [2]
  • 1,000 (2017) [3]
Part of

Flag of Syria 2011, observed.svg Free Syrian Army

Syrian Train and Equip Program
Allies
Opponents AQMI Flag asymmetric.svg Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Battles and wars

Syrian Civil War

Website https://twitter.com/lewaamotasem?lang=en

The al-Mu'tasim Brigade ((Arabic : لواء المعتصم‎, Liwa al-Mu'tasim) is a Free Syrian Army faction active in the northern Aleppo Governorate, based in the town of Mare'. The group was named after al-Mu'tasim, an Abbasid caliph.

Free Syrian Army militant rebel faction in Syria

The Free Syrian Army is a loose faction in the Syrian Civil War founded on 29 July 2011 by officers of the Syrian Armed Forces who said their goal was to bring down the government of Bashar al-Assad. A formal organization at its founding, its structure gradually dissipated by late 2012, and the FSA identity has since been used by various opposition groups.

Aleppo Governorate Governorate in Syria

Aleppo Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is the most populous governorate in Syria with a population of more than 4,868,000, almost 23% of the total population of Syria. The governorate is the fifth in area with an area of 18,482 km2 (7,136 sq mi), about 10% of the total area of Syria. The capital is the city of Aleppo. The governorate is represented by 52 deputies in the parliament, of whom 20 come from the city of Aleppo.

Mare Town in Aleppo, Syria

Mare', also spelled Marea, is a town in northern Aleppo Governorate, northwestern Syria. It is the largest town and administrative centre of the Mare' nahiyah in the Azaz District. Located some 25 kilometers north of the city of Aleppo, the town has a population of 16,904 as per the 2004 census. Nearby localities include Shaykh Issa and Tell Rifaat to the west, A'zaz to the northwest, Dabiq to the northeast, al-Bab to the southeast, and Maarat Umm Hawsh and Herbel to the south.

Contents

Equipment

The Mu'tasim Brigade is known for possessing a large amount of US-supplied weapons from the Syrian Train and Equip Program, including M16 rifles, M249 light machine guns, M240 machine guns, Soltam K6, M224 mortars, M252 mortars, M2 Browning, and technicals. This led to reports being made that this group is supplied by the United States. The group did not receive anti-tank missiles from the US.[ citation needed ]

Syrian Train and Equip Program

The Syrian Train and Equip Program was a United States-led military operation launched in 2014 that identified and trained selected Syrian opposition forces inside Syria as well as in Turkey and other US-allied states who would then return to Syria to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The program reportedly cost the US $500 million. It was an overt program, run by U.S. Special Operations Forces, separate from Timber Sycamore, the parallel covert program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As of July 2015, only a group of 54 trained and eqipped fighters had been reported to have been deployed, which was quickly routed by al-Nusra, and a further 75 were reported in September 2015.

M16 rifle Military assault rifle

The M16 rifle, officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16, is a family of military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States military. The original M16 rifle was a 5.56mm automatic rifle with a 20-round magazine.

M249 light machine gun 5.56 mm light machine gun

The M249 light machine gun (LMG), formerly designated the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) and formally written as Light Machine Gun, 5.56 mm, M249, is the American adaptation of the Belgian FN Minimi, a light machine gun manufactured by the Belgian company FN Herstal (FN). The M249 is manufactured in the United States by the local subsidiary FN Manufacturing LLC in Columbia, South Carolina and is widely used in the U.S. Armed Forces. The weapon was introduced in 1984 after being judged the most effective of a number of candidate weapons to address the lack of automatic firepower in small units. The M249 provides infantry squads with the high rate of fire of a machine gun combined with accuracy and portability approaching that of a rifle.

Ideology

The Mu'tasim Brigade supports the political Syrian peace process. However, it opposes the U.S.–Russia peace proposals on Syria. [2] The commander of the group has called for "freedom and justice", which led to tensions between him and the al-Nusra Front, seeing him as a threat to al-Nusra's caliphate project. [6]

Syrian peace process

The Syrian peace process is the ensemble of initiatives and plans to resolve the Syrian Civil War, which has been ongoing in Syria since 2011 and has spilled beyond its borders. The peace process has been moderated by the Arab League, the UN Special Envoy on Syria, Russia and Western powers. The negotiating parties to end the conflict are typically representatives of the Syrian Ba'athist government and Syrian opposition, while the Western-backed Kurdish forces have stayed out of the negotiations framework. Radical Salafist forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have not engaged in any contacts on peaceful resolution to the conflict.

U.S.–Russia peace proposals on Syria

The U.S.–Russia peace proposals on Syria refers to several American–Russian initiatives, including joint United States–Russia proposal issued in May 2013 to organize a conference for obtaining a political solution to the Syrian Civil War. The conference was eventually mediated by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations peace envoy for Syria.

Freedom, generally, is having an ability to act or change without constraint. A thing is "free" if it can change its state easily and is not constrained in its present state. In philosophy and religion, it is associated with having free will and being without undue or unjust constraints, or enslavement, and is an idea closely related to the concept of liberty. A person has the freedom to do things that will not, in theory or in practice, be prevented by other forces. Outside of the human realm, freedom generally does not have this political or psychological dimension. A rusty lock might be oiled so that the key has freedom to turn, undergrowth may be hacked away to give a newly planted sapling freedom to grow, or a mathematician may study an equation having many degrees of freedom. In mechanical engineering, "freedom" describes the number of independent motions that are allowed to a body or system, which is generally referred to as degrees of freedom."

History

The group's commander, Lieutenant colonel Mohammad Hassan Khalil, was originally a rebel commander in Jabal al-Akrad, Latakia Governorate. However, in 2015 he was forced out of Latakia by the al-Nusra Front after tensions between the two groups. His group then moved to Aleppo. [6]

Lieutenant colonel (pronounced Lef-ten-ent Kernel or Loo-ten-ent Kernel ) is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence. Sometimes, the term, 'half-colonel' is used in casual conversation in the British Army. A lieutenant colonel is typically in charge of a battalion in the army.

Jabal al-Akrad

Jabal al Akrad literally the Mountain of the Kurds is a rural mountainous region with an elevation that ranges from 400 to 1,000 meters above sea level, in northwestern Syria along the Coastal Mountain Range. It is located in the northeastern Latakia Governorate, near the borders with Idlib Governorate and Turkey. The Mountain of the Kurds should not be confused with the neighboring Kurd Mountains (Kurd-Dagh), which are located further northeast.

Latakia Governorate Governorate in Syria

Latakia Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is situated in western Syria, bordering Turkey. Its reported area varies in different sources from 2,297 km² to 2,437 km². The governorate has a population of 991,000. Members of the Alawite sect form a majority in the governorate, although Armenians, Turkmen, and Sunni Kurds form the majorities in the Kessab, Jabal Turkman, and Jabal al-Akrad regions respectively. The capital of Latakia had, by 2010 estimates, 400,000 inhabitants, 50% of whom were Alawites, 30% were Sunni, and 20% Christian.

In April 2016 the group participated in the Northern Aleppo offensive (March–June 2016), along with the Sham Legion and the Sultan Murad Division, driving vehicles from Doudiyan toward ISIL positions in al-Rai and capturing 8 villages in the way. [1]

Northern Aleppo offensive (March–June 2016)

The Northern Aleppo offensive was a series of military operations launched by Syrian opposition forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and vice versa in the northern Aleppo Governorate, near the Syria–Turkey border, the city of Azaz and the town of Mare'. The offensive is supported by airstrikes against ISIL conducted by the United States-led CJTF-OIR coalition and artillery shelling by the Turkish Armed Forces.

Sham Legion

The Sham Legion is an alliance of Sunni Islamist rebel groups formed in March 2014, during the Syrian Civil War. The alliance was formed from 19 different groups, some of which were previously affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria and the Shields of the Revolution Council.

Sultan Murad Division

The Sultan Murad Division is an armed rebel group in the Syrian Civil War, created around Syrian Turkmen identity. It is aligned with the Syrian opposition and are heavily supported by Turkey, who provides funding and military training along with artillery and aerial support. It is the most notable group among Syrian Turkmen Brigades supported by Turkey.

In June the group formed an alliance with Liwa Ahfad Saladin and 6 other rebel groups in Mare' after breaking an ISIL siege on the town. The new coalition claims to have 1,500 fighters under a unified military command and established contact with the rival Syrian Democratic Forces. [4] Later that month, Mohammad Hassan Khalil was kidnapped in Mare'. The Moutasem Brigade accused Major General Dara Aza, former commander of rebels in Mare', and al-Nusra Front of carrying out the abduction. [2]

Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of militias fighting against ISIS and Al-Nusra Front in the Syrian Civil War

The Syrian Democratic Forces, commonly abbreviated as SDF, HSD or QSD, is an alliance of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian/Syriac militias, as well as some smaller Turkmen and Chechen participating in the Syrian Civil War. The SDF is militarily led by the People's Protection Units (YPG), a mostly Kurdish militia. Founded in October 2015, the SDF states its mission as fighting to create a secular, democratic and federal Syria. The updated December 2016 constitution of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria names the SDF as its official defence force.

In August and September the Moutasem Brigade participated in the Turkish military intervention in Syria which captured Jarabulus and al-Rai. [2]

On 12 April 2017, 100 new fighters of the Mutasim Brigade graduated after they completed training in a camp near Mare', bringing the total number of members in the group to 1,000, according to one of its commanders. [3]

On 29 June 2017, Awad Abu Saqr, a military commander in the Mutasim Brigade, defected to the Syrian Democratic Forces. [5]

On 25 April 2018, the Mutasim Brigade withdraw its recognition of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces due to the National Coalition's inability to make national decisions. The group's decision came hours after George Sabra, Suheir Atassi, and Khaled Khoja resigned from the National Coalition. [7]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Syria rebels near ISIS stronghold in N. Aleppo". Now. 4 April 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Brigade Mutassim .. sons of the Syrian revolution who went out in the face of the lion and Daesh". RFS Media Office. 16 September 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Khaled al-Khateb (18 April 2017). "FSA sees 'golden opportunity' with end of Turkey's operations in Syria". Al-Monitor.
  4. 1 2 "'Not just talk': New north Aleppo rebel alliance breaks Islamic State blockade". Syria:direct. 9 June 2016.
  5. 1 2 "A new split in the ranks of the "shield of the Euphrates" .. and Asayish Shahba arrest sleeper cell belonging to the factions". Adar Press. 29 June 2017.
  6. 1 2 "The kidnapping of the commander of "Brigade Mu'tasim" while on his way to fight in Syria Mare`". Rudaw. 8 June 2016.
  7. ↑ "First FSA-Led Faction De-recognize "Syrian Coalition"". Syria Call. 25 April 2018.
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