Militants from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) currently invading Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, are taking orders from Turkish intelligence, French news agency AFP reported on 30 November.
HTS, formerly known as the Nusra Front, launched a lightning offensive from the group’s stronghold in Idlib Governorate on Wednesday. Its fighters took over numerous villages in the Aleppo countryside before taking control of large parts of Aleppo City on Saturday, including the ancient citadel.
AFP writes that “Opposition sources in touch with Turkish intelligence said Turkey had given a green light to the offensive.”
An AFP correspondent in HTS-held Idlib further reported that “The jihadists and their Turkey-backed allies took orders from a joint operations command.”
During the US-backed covert war on Syria that began in 2011, the CIA and allied intelligence agencies established joint operations rooms in southern Turkiye and Amman, Jordan, to direct the activities of their extremist proxies fighting the Syrian government.
Izvestia reported that the current HTS attack on Aleppo was coordinated between Turkish, Ukrainian, and French intelligence, with Israeli support and US approval.
The Russian newspaper said the assault was originally planned for March but was launched early in response to events in Lebanon.
On Wednesday, a ceasefire took effect to halt 66 days of brutal fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli army in Lebanon.
Just as the ceasefire began, Israel turned its sights on Syria by bombing Lebanese-Syrian border crossings in an effort to prevent weapons transfers from Syria to Hezbollah.
Syrian army sources said on Saturday that Israel was also backing the extremists attacking Aleppo and areas on the Idlib front.
In the past, Israel has kept its support for Al-Qaeda groups in Syria covert so as not to damage their credibility in the eyes of Arabs and Sunni Muslims.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a special security discussion Friday evening with the heads of the defense establishment to discuss the current fighting in Syria.
According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli officials view the Turkish-backed extremist advance on Aleppo as an opportunity to weaken Syria, which is a key ally of Hezbollah and Iran in the Axis of Resistance.
An unnamed Israeli official told the Hebrew newspaper that the fighting “is something we need to closely monitor and see how it develops.'”
“It doesn’t necessarily affect us, especially not in the short term, but any erosion of stability in a neighboring country could also impact us. It seems here that there are also opportunities for change,” the official said.
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/27907
