Before the Fall: Free Syrian Army Officer Hopes For a Friendship with Israel

By December 8, it was all over. Aleppo, Hama, Daraa, Homs, and Damascus had all fallen to the rebels. The lanky ophthalmologist and mass murderer Bashar Assad was welcomed by the Russians, and Putin offered him, his fetching wife, and his children, asylum. Just before the fall of Damascus, the Times of Israel published an interview with a commander in the Free Syrian Army. The FSA is a secular and democratic opposition group that right now is making common cause with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamic jihad group. This FSA commander, in his sixties, is still of great interest, as he discusses what he hoped could come after Assad was toppled, as he now has been: a country that can be a friend, or at least not an enemy of, the Jewish state. That interview can be found here: “Syrian rebel commander urges Israel to support uprising, strike Iran-backed forces,” by Gianluca Pacchiani, Times of Israel, December 6, 2024:

…This week, The Times of Israel spoke with a rebel commander from the Free Syrian Army, a secular coalition of opposition forces founded by mainly Sunni defectors from the Syrian military at the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

Its primary goal is to organize resistance against the Assad regime. Over a decade ago, the group positioned itself as a moderate alternative to more extremist factions, advocating for a democratic and secular Syria.

The FSA gained international attention at the outbreak of the civil war by taking control of significant territories in northern Syria, including parts of Aleppo. At the time it was seen as the primary opposition force against Assad. It began receiving arms and aid from Western and Gulf countries, including the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but over time, Turkey became its main backer.

However, as ISIS and other jihadist groups gained prominence, the FSA struggled to maintain relevance and became embroiled in clashes with other rebel factions. In recent years, the FSA has morphed into a loose coalition of various factions with differing ideologies, leading to challenges in maintaining cohesion and a unified command structure.

The commander interviewed by The Times of Israel participated in the recent seizure of Aleppo and his troops are now fighting government forces, Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias in the area, and pushing south….

But now the fighting is over. The rebels have triumphed. The interview he gave just a week before Assad left for Moscow, however, retains its interest. It may mean nothing; the jihadists may take over, as many fear, or there may be some sort of coalition that includes the Free Syrian Army that could act as a brake on the Islamist HTS, as many hope. We’ll soon see.

The rebel leader, in his early 60s, agreed to be interviewed by phone on condition of anonymity and spoke of the objectives of the ongoing campaign, his vision for the future of Syria and relations with Israel, and the role the Jewish state can play, in his view, in support of the rebels.

The interview was lightly edited for clarity and concision. The figures given by the commander could not be independently verified.

The Times of Israel: How have the rebels been received by the civilian population in Aleppo after they chased out pro-Assad and Iran-backed forces?

Free Syrian Army officer: People are very grateful to the fighters because they are their brothers and family members. Many of the fighters are Aleppo natives who fought the Assad regime in the civil war, and then fled to Idlib [a city in north-western Syria under rebel control] and vowed to return. Now they are coming home.

The Iranian militias and Hezbollah, which made up 90-95% of the forces controlling Aleppo, have no relation to Syria. Now they have left Aleppo, and unlike us, they cannot say they will one day return. This is not their home.

While the Free Syrian Army in which you fight is a secular militia, concern has been voiced that the uprising is being spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadi organization. How do you respond to those concerns?

[HTS is an Islamist group that was born out of the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Its leader Abu Muhammed al-Golani has indicated his intention to impose sharia law over Syria, and has expressed support for Hamas’s brutal onslaught on October 7, 2023. However, the group has never directly threatened Israel. It distanced itself from Al Qaeda in 2016 and rebranded itself as more moderate to the outside world, but the UN has denounced human rights violations by HTS in areas it controls in Idlib province. While the US has put a $10 million bounty on al-Golani’s head, James Jeffrey, a former US diplomat in the region, said in 2021 that Golani was “the least bad option of the various options on Idlib.”]

The Syrian and Iranian regimes and the enemies of the Syrian revolution have tried to portray the Syrian uprising in the past as a terrorist movement born out of Al Qaeda. They have tried to demonize us, but our only motive is nationalistic.

The leader of HTS, Mohamed al-Jolani, has said that he no longer believes in the ideology of Al-Qaeda, and that his aim is not to establish a caliphate but only to depose the Syrian despot who has made life so miserable for so many of his countryman.

In the end, once the Assad regime is toppled, HTS will be pressured to move away from its fundamentalist ideology and move to the political center, in the interest of Syria….

Well, that regime has now been toppled, a week after this interview was given. And we await the formation of a new government in Damascus that will show us whether our hopes or fears for the future of Syria are confirmed. Will HTS now move away from jihad and Sharia, as this Free Syrian Army commander thinks possible, or will it remain true, despite its leader’s assurances to the contrary, to its Islamic beginnings?

The day Assad falls, we will reverse the disintegration of Syria, and we will turn the Syrian state into a democratic one. Our clear objective is to liberate and reconstruct our country and ensure that all ethnic and religious groups can coexist.

He seems confident that the “secular rebels” of the Free Syrian Army will prevail over the rebels of the HTS, whose “extremist Islam” he thinks is behind them. We’ll see if his optimistic view prevails. As Syria is a Muslim country that for 54 years has known only savage despotism, I think skepticism over this claim to be able to turn the country into a “democratic state” is warranted.

A week after this interview, Damascus was not only reached by the rebels, but it fell to them in less than two days. Assad is in Moscow. The various rebel groups, from the fundamentalist HTS to the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA), are jockeying for positions in the government that has still not been formed. One hopes that the FSA is represented in this new government, and that the HTS, whose leader Al-Jolani keeps putting out statements reassuring the Christians and other minorities that their rights will be protected, means it. A Sharia-adherent Islamic state would be a threat to those minorities and, of course, to Israel. So trust — or mistrust — the HTS and the FSA spokesmen, but for god’s sake verify.