Area of operations Aleppo Governorate | ||
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Active 2 January 2014 – December 2016 (Army of Mujahideen group)
December 2016 – 25 January 2017 (Jabhat Ahl al-Sham)
December 2016 – 24 January 2017 (Army of Mujahideen faction) Ideology Sunni Islamism
Salafism Leaders Capt. Mohammed Shakerdi
Salim Abu Jaafar
Hammoud Al-Barm † (top commander) Strength 5,000+–12,000 (own claim, 2014)
4,000 (own claim, May 2016)
8,000 (December 2016, Russian military claim) Part of Free Syrian Army (2016–17)
Syrian Revolutionary Command Council (2014–15)
Levant Front (2014–15)
Fatah Halab (2015-2017)
Ahrar al-Sham (since 2017) Allies Sham Legion, Syrian Revolutionaries Front, Suqour al-Sham Brigade, Levant Front Battles and wars Syrian civil war, al-Nusra Front–SRF/Hazzm Movement conflict Opponents Syrian Armed Forces, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Syrian Democratic Forces, Al-Nusra Front | ||
Army of Mujahideen (Arabic: جيش المجاهدين, Jaysh al-Mujahideen), from December 2016, Jabhat Ahl al-Sham (Arabic: جبهة أهل الشام; People of the Levant Front), main member group Army of Mujahideen (Arabic: جيش المجاهدين, Jaysh al-Mujahideen), was a coalition of Sunni Islamist rebel groups which formed in order to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during the Syrian Civil War. The group accused ISIL of disrupting "security and stability" in areas that had been captured from the Syrian government. The spokesperson of the coalition said it would start operations in Idlib and Aleppo and gradually expand towards the rest of Syria.
Contents
History
The factions which formed the Army of Mujahideen largely emerged from the villages and towns of the Aleppo hinterland. The Army does not have a political program, and although the member groups have an Islamist identity, they were largely non-ideological Free Syrian Army affiliated groups earlier in the Syrian Civil War. The three groups at the core of the alliance were Division 19, the Fastaqim Union and the Nour al-Din al-Zanki Islamic Brigades, which was also then part of the Authenticity and Development Front.
On 4 May 2014, the Army of Mujahideen announced the withdrawal of the Nour al-Din al-Zanki Islamic Brigades from the coalition. On 3 June 2014, the Army announced the expulsion of Division 19's Liwaa al-Ansar unit and its leader, Abu Bakr, accusing them of theft and kidnapping.
Charles Lister, of the Brookings Doha Center, described the Army of Mujahideen as being a shadow of its former self by August 2014, partially due to a reduction in support it had received from foreign states. Fastaqim Kama Umirt left the group around December 2014.
In September 2014, the United States began planning weapon supplies to the group, and in the same month, fifty of the group's fighters were given military training in Qatar and supplied with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles in a covert CIA program.
On 6 May 2015, it, along with 13 other Aleppo-based groups, joined the Fatah Halab joint operations room.
It announced its support to Turkey against the Kurdistan Workers Party. It also fights the Syrian Democratic Forces in Aleppo.
Several factions of the group, including the al-Noor Islamic Movement, the Amjad al-Islam Brigade, and the al-Quds Brigades left to join the Revolutionaries of the Levant Battalions in April 2015.
In December 2016, the Army of Mujahideen re-merged with Thuwar al-Sham Battalion and the Banner of Islam Movement to form Jabhat Ahl al-Sham.
On 23 January 2017, the al-Nusra Front attacked Jabhat Ahl al-Sham bases in Atarib and other towns in western Aleppo. All the bases were captured and by 24 January, the group was defeated and joined Ahrar al-Sham.