Syria's rebel fighters recruited to fight Isis, but captured and beaten by Jabhat al-Nusra for 'collaborating with crusaders'
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Version 0 of 1. Farhan al-Jassem is not a reluctant soldier, but sadness lurked behind his smile and deep brown eyes when he talked about the past two and half years he spent trying to fight what he considers the good fight in Syria. In a tea garden in south-eastern Turkey last month, Lieutenant Jassem, 29, gulped down several bottles of water as he told the story of how he came to lead a key Syrian military brigade, trained and equipped by the US-led coalition, receiving training and equipment from a US-organised military coalition to take the fight to Islamic State (Isis). Now, a few weeks later, his life hangs in the balance after he was captured, beaten, accused of “collaborating with crusaders” and jailed by his captors Jabhat al-Nusra. The medium-built lieutenant, who dropped out of university where he was studying Arabic literature, got his first taste of the country’s civil war in early 2012, when he was conscripted into President’s Bashar al-Assad’s army. He hated it and bought his way out, paying £130 for permission to visit his home town of Manbij, 40 miles north-east of Aleppo. There, against his parents wishes, he quickly joined the anti-regime Free Syrian Army, before moving to a smaller Turkmen brigade and then to the so-called 30th Division, created by the United States, Turkey and their allies as the vanguard of Washington’s effort to roll back Isis’s territorial gains. Jabhat al-Nusra fighters drive in armed vehicles through the northern Syrian city of Aleppo towards the frontline (AFP) Desperate for weapons to fight the jihadis that took his home town, Lt Jassem signed up to prioritising their defeat, before turning his attention back to Bashar al-Assad and his regime. When he spoke in July, he had passed an initial round of vetting to join the training and expected to participate in the next class – so long as the US coalition kept its promises, especially a promise the coalition would “protect us against our enemies after the programme ends”, he said. But his fate took an uncertain turn on 28 July, when he was captured by a rival militia, known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda and an enemy of any Syrian close to Americans. Captured alongside Lt Jassem near the northern Syrian town of Azaz were his division’s commander, 16 graduates of the allied train-and-equip programme and two other division soldiers, according to Aziz Abu Mohammad, a Division 30 commander based in Turkey. The Pentagon is contesting that any recruits from the train-and-equip programme have been detained despite numerous reports and Jabhat al-Nusra’s claim that the troops have been abducted. “We warn soldiers of [Division 30] against proceeding in the American project,” Jabhat al-Nusra said in a statement released on Friday. “We and the Sunni people in Syria will not allow their sacrifices to be offered on a golden platter to the American side.” Jabhat al-Nusra has systematically gained dominance and popular support in the north of the country thanks to its successes in fighting Assad’s army – the group took the north-eastern town of Idlib in April and has long been fighting on Aleppo’s grisly frontline alongside numerous rebel groups. It also fights against Isis and captured a haul of US weapons in February when it overran Western-backed rebel fighters Harakat Hazm. Lt Jassem said he was aware of the risks of joining the US-led coalition effort. Graduates of the train-and-equip programme would be returning to Syria “with targets on their backs”, he said. Nusra and other rebel groups, they knew, targeted recipients of foreign aid not just because of their anti-Western ideology, but also because they coveted the M16s and anti-tank guided missiles that coalition forces provided. Even though their handlers from the Pentagon had promised to protect the trainees, Lt Jassem said, it was a purely verbal agreement. In March, one of Lt Jassem’s superiors from his old brigade, Colonel Nedim al-Hasan, travelled to Ankara for a meeting with high-level officials from Turkey, the US and other allied nations. He returned with an invitation for Lt Jassem: to join a new rebel group that would unite a number of anti-Isis brigades – specifically those that had been forced out of their towns by Isis – and scattered around eastern Syria. Syrian rebels return fire at Syrian army positions south of the highway town of Maraat al-Numan (AFP) Most were ethnic Turkmens like the colonel, but also included Arabs like Lt Jassem. The aim of the division, he said, was to create a force from which recruits for the US-led coalition’s anti-Isis train-and-equip programme could be drawn. The vetting process was intensive, he said, and discomfiting for many. Candidates for training were interviewed in the second stage while attached to polygraph machines by wires wrapped around their fingers, he said. The questions were simple – had they ever fought for Nusra, for example? But the candidates had heard that similar-looking machines were used to administer shocks to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and so were scared. Being subjected to eye and fingerprint scans added to their fears. “They felt like laboratory rats,” said Lt Jassem. Most enticing to the recruits of the programme, Lt Jassem said, was the prospect of getting satellite phones connected to vehicles, with which they could supposedly call in airstrikes from coalition warplanes when needed. When he spoke, he and his fellow soldiers were just finishing their training with US special forces at a Turkish base. After training they intended to return to Syria and rejoin more than 1,000 troops from their division who had continued to fight Isis. Lt Jassem estimated that one in five of his fellow soldiers had applied for the train-and-equip programme but were rejected. The northern city of Azaz, where Lt Jassem's division commander was also captured (AFP/Getty) At the time of his abduction, Lt Jassem, two friends and the colonel met their colleagues who were returning to Syria after several days in Turkey visiting relatives celebrating the end of Ramadan. The Nusra kidnapping was especially horrifying, Mr Abu Mohammad said, because he and Jassem had met an Egyptian Jabhat al-Nusra leader just 10 days before and agreed that the two groups would leave each other alone. “They said that if even one bullet reached them, they would attack us, but we assured them we were there only to fight Daesh [Isis],” the distraught commander said, still reeling from the betrayal. Lt Jassem and his group were detained at the first Nusra checkpoint a few miles south of the Turkish border, and their captors brought them into the town of Azaz. As Nusra’s soldiers hauled the group into the town to humiliate them publicly, Mr Abu Mohammed received a call from his friend, a local business owner in Azaz, who relayed the scene as it unfolded in front of him. The men were beaten, paraded through town with the backs of their shirts pulled over their heads as the afternoon sun bore down on them, while Nusra fighters shouted that they had “collaborated with the crusader coalition”. A Turkish military base in Gaziantep (AFP/Getty) Only two days after the group’s capture, a militia conducted a major attack on Division 30’s headquarters, killing five other graduates of the programme. Coalition warplanes reacted to both incidents by bombing the headquarters of Jabhat al-Nusra in Azaz, Mr Abu Mohammad said, a claim the Pentagon declined to confirm. Hours after the raids, Mr Abu Mohammad admitted Nusra’s reaction will likely be to execute the detainees, including the young lieutenant, and “finish” the Division 30. “Their fate is sealed.” This story was reported in partnership with the US-based Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC: www.publicintegrity.org |