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The Motives Behind the Establishment of the "National Army" Reserve to Turkey Abdel Nasser Hassou Introduction Popul

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The Motives Behind The Establishment Of The "National Army" Reserve to Turkey Abdel Nasser Hassou Introduction Popular protests in Syria quickly turned into a bloody conflict, which has claimed nearly one million lives since 2011, due to the impact of external, international and regional factors that the Syrian arena witnessed during the past years. As the revolution turned into its military phase, it suffered from wide political and military transformations. The factions multiplied. In 2014, the number of factions was estimated at 1,000, comprising at least 100,000 Syrian and foreign fighters, and their orientations varied according to the countries that support them. The territory under their control expended (at one time it reached 70% of Syria), led to bloody conflicts between them for control of the crossings and tunnels, encapsulating those conflicts with ideology and religious fatwas, and all attempts to integrate these factions and unify them failed. In practice, the armed revolution since 2013 has not succeeded in any central operation, and has not been able to carry out any battle with strategic and tactical objectives. In fact, most of the battles it fought were in response to the regional and international struggle for the influence in the field map. The establishment of the "National Army" is a Turkish necessity The first attempt to establish a military entity after the splits in the regular army was to establish the "Free Officers Brigade", at the initiative of renegade Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush, but the attempt failed after he was arrested by Turkish intelligence and handed over to the Syrian regime on the back of his disagreement with the Turkish leaders. Because of his refusal to depend and cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, as was rumored at that time. On the ruins of the "Free Officers", the "Free Syrian Army" FSA, as a military wing of the Syrian revolution was built, with a gelatinous structure without any clear ideology or political authority that offered a vision for Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. However, the FSA factions seemed to be the national alternative to the regime's army, which stood up against its people. The factions of the "Free Army", with no real central leadership, diverged and led to the independence of each faction from one another to the point of fighting with each other. It was clear from the beginning that the Islamists had penetrated strongly into these factions, and this was evident in the factions' names, their flags, their slogans and the uniform of their fighters. The factions suffered major defeats, losing most of the territory they had controlled since 2012, and because of their internal fragility and the game of foreign nations, these factions became pawns in the hands of various regional powers, and the loss of Aleppo was the title of the great defeat. It was only recently that a unified opposition army was seriously established, because Turkey needed Syrians to take the lead in its war against the SDF in an attempt to legitimize it when it entered Syrian territory. So, in response to Turkish pressure, the Syrian Islamic Council launched an initiative to establish the "National Army" from Istanbul, in coordination with the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Political Bureau of the Free Syrian Army (formal body) and the interim government approved the Islamic Council initiative. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Turkish Special Forces in the presence of the governor of the cities of Kulis and Enteb, as well as the commander of the Turkish special forces, members of the Syrian interim government, and leaders of the FSA residing in Turkey. They agreed on several points, the most important of which are: 1. Provide support to Turkey in its war with the SDF. 2. Management of the crossings between Syria and Turkey by the Interim Government. 3. Collecting the crossings revenues in the treasury of the interim government. 4. The transfer of factions to the stage of the regular army through the process of integration. Despite the unification of the military factions in the "National Army" with Turkish funding, and under the cover of "legitimate" represented by a fatwa issued by the Islamic Council, each faction had legal opinions different from those of the "National Army", that permitted them to make military and political decisions alone in the area it controls . Perhaps the experience of the operations "Euphrates Shield" and "Olive Branch", which aimed at the occupation of the Afrin region, confirms this methodology in the behavior of these factions, these factions have fought between them, and committed serious violations against civilians, turning them into factions of mercenaries and they were de-nationalized. Problematic national standard The tasks of the National Army are defined in three axes, as announced by the Head of the Interim Government: 1. Protection of northwestern Syria. 2. Fighting the Syrian regime forces. 3. Assisting the Turkish army to get rid of the "Syrian Democratic Forces" in the eastern Euphrates. But the army's tasks were not entirely clear under an incoherent military structure. It operates in Aleppo countryside as an internal security force (police), while placing itself in Idlib and Hama countryside under the authority of de facto forces that impose themselves in their areas of influence. Despite populist speeches by army commanders on every occasion that ( he will continue to liberate the country from tyranny and sectarianism, and will preserve the unity and integrity of the homeland, and will work to liberate every inch of Syria and return it to its true Syrian companions, especially in the east of the Euphrates region after the people of the region suffered injustice and displacement, and that the Ministry of Defense will use all its capabilities to defend the opposition factions' control areas in northern Syria), but the practice on the ground is quite different. In Operation Olive Branch, the factions worked to bring about a demographic change in Afrin and annexed it to the Turkish state of Hatay. In the north of Aleppo, where the National Army is stationed away from Idlib, awaiting for orders from the Turkish government, without any friction with the regime forces since its establishment two years ago. Moreover, the factions that are members of the "National Army", it is difficult to determine the roles they play, whether they form a national army or not, given the criterion of value that requires the implementation of priorities within national borders, and in view of the tasks they perform, we will find that they transcend the national borders according to Non-Syrian priorities, therefore, the term "National Army" remains a nomenclature, which does not always correspond to the objective for which it was established. Structure of the National Army The National Army formed an official central military structure under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense of the Interim Government, established by Turkish forces in late 2017, to unite most of the factions that contributed to the operations of the "Euphrates Shield" and "Olive Branch" in northern Aleppo and Operation "Spring of Peace" in the east of the Euphrates now under his command, where it is estimated about (35) thousand fighters before the merger with the National Liberation Front, and after the merger the number became (80) thousand fighters, is characterized by an identity that reflects the image of the factions, not the image of an army, and consists of more than (30) armed factions of Arab and Turkmen tribes. The structure of the "National Army" was as follows: The portfolio of the Ministry of Defense and the Chief of Staff for Major General Salim Idris, Brigadier Adnan al-Ahmad as deputy chief of staff in the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations, and Brigadier General Fadlallah al-Hajji as deputy chief of staff for Idlib and around, more than (30) faction commanders. The factions in the "National Army" are divided into two types, factions, whose reference is the founding commander who considers the faction to be his own property, and will not relinquish his position to an officer sent by the Ministry of Defense in the Interim Government. Islamic factions, subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief and legitimates of religious edicts, are therefore it is difficult to integrate the two groups under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defense, and it may take a long time. The Interim Government announced that it will unify the military formations under the command of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, and continue to build the "National Army" on the basis of professional military, and will control the weapons deployed in so-called the "liberated areas". Some factions have received intensive and brief training by special units of the Turkish army, especially those that participated in the operations of the "Euphrates Shield" and "Olive Branch", which were not subject to integration mechanisms and did not give up their names in favor of the effective empowerment of the Ministry of Defense in military administration and organization. Through a hierarchical system to obtain a military hierarchy, provide specialized and regular military training, and establish police and military courts to reduce violations against civilians and prosecute the criminals. While there have been numerous reports criticizing the factional composition of this army, and explained that each faction or military formation within this army, maintained its own structure in exchange for integration into operating rooms to carry out any task entrusted to it, in other words that the process of merging those factions was not a process of dissolution and reconfiguration, it is only a process of uniting and coordinating efforts, so it can be considered a coalition of factions.
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