Former rebels were promoted to officers in Syria’s future army in a decree passed by de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa — with a war monitor and experts identifying on Monday foreign jihadists among them.
The new authorities in Damascus, who until recently were Islamist-led rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, last week unveiled an accord with armed groups in Syria on their dissolution and integration into the defense ministry.
A decree, published late Sunday on the Telegram account of Sharaa’s General Command, listed 49 people to be made officers, including former rebels and ex-army officers who deserted to join the opposition in the early days of Syria’s civil war.
The promotions are part of efforts aimed at “the development and modernisation of the military… in order to guarantee security and stability,” the decree said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, told AFP that “most of those who have been promoted are people within Ahmed al-Sharaa’s inner circle.”
They are the first military promotions since Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group led the offensive that toppled Assad on December 8.
Two men have been given the rank of general, including Murhaf Abu Qasra, the military head of HTS, who has been tipped to become defense minister in the transitional government.
Five others were made brigadier generals and around 40 were given the rank of colonel.
The Britain-based Observatory with a network of sources inside Syria has identified at least “six foreign jihadists” among those promoted, including an Albanian, a Jordanian, a Tajik, a Uyghur, and a Turk from HTS.
The Uyghur is a member of the Turkistan Islamic Party, a jihadist group whose fighters mostly hail from China’s Uyghur minority.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on jihadist groups and the Syrian conflict, meanwhile identified three foreigners on the list: a Uyghur, a Jordanian and a Turk who “headed the block of Turkish fighters under HTS and is now a brigadier general.”
Among the Syrian officers, the majority come from HTS, with the rest coming from “allied factions” the Observatory said.
HTS itself has jihadist roots in Al-Qaeda and its former Syrian branch, the Al-Nusra Front.
