Groups Ghosts of the Desert Strength 300 fighters | Leaders Khazal al-Sarhan | |
Active 10 November 2015 – December 2016 Area of operations Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Homs Governorate, & Rif Dimashq Governorate, Syria
Anbar Governorate, Iraq Part of Free Syrian Army
Authenticity and Development Front (formerly) | ||
The New Syrian Army (Arabic: جيش سوريا الجديد, Jaysh Suriyah al-Jadid), abbreviated NSA or NSyA, was a group of Syrian Arab Army defectors established during the Syrian Civil War. Founded in November 2015, they sought to expel the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from eastern Syria. They claimed to receive training and advanced weaponry from the Authenticity and Development Front and CIA.
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Operational history
On 16 November 2015, the NSA was deployed at al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, near Iraq and Jordan, and carried out a raid, with or without USA aerial support. No further information was given.
On 5 March 2016, the NSA and another FSA group, Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Brigades and Battalions, captured the al-Tanf border crossing from ISIL in a cross-border raid from Jordan.
In May 2016, an Islamic State suicide attack on a NSA base near al-Tanf resulted in a large number of casualties. The attack brought to the surface underlying tensions and a lack of morale within the group, whose members alleged that the US failed to provide them with the equipment promised.
In June the NSA's base near al-Tanf was hit by multiple cluster bombs from Russian airstrikes, killing 2 and injuring 18. Russia denied responsibility, although photos released by the NSA identified the bombs as Russian RBK-500 cluster bombs which were delivered from the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia.
The group later launched an offensive against ISIL in Abu Kamal later that month, but were repelled by ISIL.
On 3 August 2016, the NSA was kicked out of the Authenticity and Development Front.
In December 2016, the group reportedly disbanded after internal disputes. Some remnants regrouped under the name of the Revolutionary Commando Army, led by Captain Abdullah al-Zoubi.
Ghosts of the Desert
The Ghosts of the Desert is a NSA-affiliated anti-ISIL insurgent group that covertly operates in ISIL-held towns in southeastern Syria and southwestern Iraq such as Abu Kamal, Mayadin, and al-Qaim. Since March 2016 they initially sprayed graffiti and raised Syrian and Iraqi flags in the towns, but began to conduct covert military activities the next month, such as sabotage, assassinations of ISIL fighters, and marking positions for airstrikes. The group supplied military intelligence to the US Air Force that allowed them to kill Abu Waheeb in May 2016 in the Iraqi town of Rutbah after the group marked his location.