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| "National Syrian Army" commander Gen. Haj Ali (r) and Tawheed's Saleh |
Some
400 officers from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) concluded a three-day conference
in Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria with a decision to close ranks and
combine the disparate FSA offshoots under a unified command.
Abdel
Qader Saleh, who leads the Tawheed Brigade and heads FSA military operations in
Aleppo, made the announcement yesterday.
The
streamlining move reportedly follows “prodding from Turkey and France, backing
from the United States and Arab appreciation.”
Key officers attending
the three-day huddle included Col. Riad Asaad, founding commander of the FSA; Col. Qassem Saadeddine, FSA spokesman on the ground inside Syria; Maj.
Gen. Adnan Nawras Salou, head of the Joint
Military Command Council for the Syrian Revolution; and FSA Military Council
head Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh.
The assumption is that the restructured FSA will
henceforth come under the wings of the newly formed “General Command of the
Syrian National Army.” Or will it?
Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hussein Haj Ali will head the
Syrian National Army, which becomes the Syrian Revolution’s military arm.
He was born in Khirbet Ghazaleh,
Deraa Province, in 1954 and headed Syria’s National Defense College since 2008 when
he defected to the opposition in early August.
He is a Public Administration graduate of Damascus
University, attended the former Soviet Union’s V.
I. Lenin Military Academy in 1984-85 and holds a PhD in National Strategy
from Egypt’s Nasser
Higher Military Academy.
