Is Hurras al-Din in Syria still operational?
The attempted survival of the Qaedist offshoot in the Levant.
On 31 January 2022, al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Syria, Hurras al-Din (HaD) released a statement from its official media more than six months after the last time. The statement, titled: “Be Witnesses that No Blood Money is to be for her Blood” (the title is taken from a Hadith as jihadist organizations often do), is two pages long and without ever specifically mentioning them, condemns the recent insults to the prophet Muhammad and the Koran burnings that took place in Belgium and Sweden, describing the perpetrators of these acts as “incredulous and criminal”.
The publication of this statement indirectly reflects several interesting assessments. The first cue is that within the al-Qaeda galaxy, until now, no one had published statements condemning what happened with the insults to the prophet and the Koran burnings. Hurras al-Din is the first to do so, incidentally with considerable delay. Only the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State province in Khurasan had published statements of condemnation and revenge. The second cue is that Hurras al-Din, after months of a lack of military operations and publication of propaganda, decides to break its silence to publish a very general statement, without giving further details on the conditions of the group or calling for revenge or threatening attacks. The third cue is that once again, al-Qaeda and its offshoots (excluding Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) publish propaganda material that is not useful for their fighters, supporters and sympathizers to understand the state of the organization, confirming the difficulty and confusion within al-Qaeda.
The History of Hurras al-Din
The future emergence of Hurras al-Din is closely linked to the clashes between Jabhat al-Nusra's relationship with al-Qaeda's leadership between 2016 and 2017, both for reasons related to operational and military choices, and because of al-Nusra’s choice to disengage from al-Qaeda. Tensions escalated and escalated in July 2017, when the newly formed Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) issued a statement banning the creation of new jihadist groups in northern Syria. In response to these tensions and the decisions of HTS, Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri released a video entitled “We will fight you so that there is no Fitna” in October 2017, in which he strongly condemned the separation of Jabhat al-Nusra, later to become HTS, from al-Qaeda.
Some prominent ideologues, such as Abu Qatada al-Filistini Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Omar al-Haddoushi, initially tried to break up the dispute and the subsequent split, but Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham instead proceeded to arrest prominent figures loyal to al-Qaeda, including Sami al-Uraydi, Iyad al-Tubasi and Abu Jalibib al-Jordani, accused of being the leaders of the sedition.
In November 2017, following the arrests, as-Sahab, the official media of al-Qaeda Central, published an audio recording of Ayman al-Zawahiri harshly criticizing the leadership of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and calling on all fighters loyal to al-Qaeda to uphold their oath of allegiance to al-Qaeda under all circumstances and situations and to separate or distance themselves from HTS. In early December 2017, following al-Zawahiri’s instructions, several armed jihadist groups began to become independent and defect.
On 27 February 2018, the establishment of Hurras al-Din (HaD), led by Abu al-Hammam al-Suri, is officially announced. Within HaD, numerous small jihadist groups such as Jaysh al-Malahim, Jaysh al-Badia, Jaysh al-Sahel, Saraya al-Sahel, Saraya al-Kabul, Jund al-Sharia, Jama’at Ansar al-Haq will converge, Abna al-Shari'a, Abdullah Azzam Group, Al-Ghuraba Battalion, Abdul Rahman bin Auf Company, Al-Battar Battalion, Al-Ghouta and Douma Companies, remnants of Jund al-Aqsa, and many foreign fighters.
Abu al-Hammam al-Suri assumed the overall command of the Guardians of Religion organization, Abu al-Qassam al-Urduni that of a military officer and his deputy, while the “legal file” was assigned to Sami al-Uraydi. To compensate for its limited resources and reach, and the differences with HTS, the “Guardians of Religion” entered several alliances with independent jihadist factions, with common goals of the Qaedist ideology and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime. such as Ansar al-Tawhid, Ansar al-Islam and the “Ansar al-Din Front” in November 2018, creating the “Incite the Believers Operations Room” and from November 2020, after Ansar al-Tawhid leaves the Operations Room, it will become the “Stand Firm Operations Room”.
Despite these attempts by HaD, the difficulties and disagreements with HTS did not stop and even increased when Hurras al-Din refused to recognize the “Syrian Salvation Government”, which runs the affairs of the city of Idlib under the supervision of HTS, and its refusal to join the “Al-Fatah Al-Mubin” operations room created and run by HTS, which includes most of the armed factions in Idlib. In addition, Hurras al-Din accused HTS of forming relations with Turkey. The situation was exacerbated by the decision of the Guardians of Religion to arrest some important members of HTS to pressure the release of the detained leaders, which quickly degenerated into a military escalation in which HTS got the worst of it. HTS will then issue a statement banning any military activity outside the “Al-Fatah al-Mubin” operations room or the creation of any entity of a military nature. Between 2020 and 2022, HTS conducted numerous arrest campaigns against leaders of Hurras al-Din and other jihadist groups (such as Junund al-Sham and Ansar al-Islam), which led to the arrest of more than a dozen senior HaD leaders and the killing of leaders responsible for their operations in other provinces.
Clashes with HTS and internal divisions were not the only reasons for the collapse of Hurras al-Din, but also the attacks launched by the United States against its leadership over the past three years. Among the most prominent of these leaders are Abu al-Qassam al-Jordani, Khallad al-Muhandis, Abu Khadija, Abu Jalibib al-Jordani, Abu Muhammad al-Sudani, Abu Adnan al-Homsi, and Abu al-Baraa al-Tunisi, all veteran leaders of more than two decades of al-Qaeda, whom the organisation has failed to replace. The most important US strike came in June 2020, when the US targeted and killed deputy commander-in-chief Khaled al-Aruri, known as Abu al-Qassam al-Urduni and Bilal al-San’ani. Between August 2020 and June 202, the US targeted and kills three other prominent leaders Abu Adnan al-Homsi, Musab Kinan and Abu Hamzah al-Yemeni.
Other Hurras al-Din leaders still alive were later placed on US and European anti-terrorism and wanted lists between 2019 and 2022, including, Faruq al-Suri (with a $5 million reward) and Sami al-Aridi.
What is the current status of Hurras al-Din?
Currently, leading the organization is Faruq al-Suri, known as Abu Humam al-Shami, a veteran of al-Qaeda since 1998. Among the most important leaders are those of the Shura Council, which currently includes Sami al-Aridi and Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Makki. Sami al-Aridi is also considered the religious leader and head of the Shari'a Committee. Their leadership is completely hidden.
The leader of HaD, Faruq al-Suri, is known as Abu Humam al-Shami.
The current situation does not allow Hurras al-Din to engage in extraterritorial or military activities within Syria's borders, as HTS continues to closely monitor the Qaedist group. HTS leader al-Jolani is serious about permanently eliminating HaD from the Syrian scene as he still considers it a threat, mostly ideological and to his goal of territorial control. HTS managed to dismantle most of the Hurras al-Din networks in Syria, making the Syrian context no longer favourable.
HTS’s goal is to dismantle jihadist networks in the country that have not aligned with it and its operations room (in fact, Ansar al-Islam is also among the targeted groups). Therefore, al-Jolani will continue to confront and besiege them with arrests and attacks until he has forced them to surrender.
Hurras al-Din, after repeated clashes with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, in particular the battles of Arab Saeed, received instructions from al-Zawahiri not to engage in the fight against HTS. Thus, they started a new approach, based on relocating their activities to the regime and eastern areas, avoiding activities in Idlib and HTS areas. They started to adopt a policy of not claiming military operations in Damascus and elsewhere, such as Raqqa, for political and security reasons.
The last claim of an attack by HaD, was in August 2021, in which it claimed responsibility for the explosion of a bus with Syrian government army soldiers inside Damascus. There have been several similar attacks in recent months, but without any claim. The suspicion is that it may have been HaD cells. The lack of claim is in line with a low-profile strategy and instructions received. The author’s sources confirmed that in the past year, they conducted military operations in Raqqa against the Russians, and near Damascus [1].
Conclusions
Despite the recently published statement and some suspected attacks, it is currently clear that Hurras al-Din is not able to finance or carry out actions on a continuous basis. They can conduct simple operations (such as IEDs or assassinations) remotely over time, and sometimes use the tactic of “individual jihad” attacks, but as work, in an organized manner, they are almost crippled. At the moment they seem to have little economic and weapons capacity and the leadership is not efficient enough [2], internally they disagree on ideology and operations to hold, as in the case of relations with HTS, the position towards Turkey [3]. The latest attacks on the US leadership have also reduced their ability to be a threat to American troops.
HTS security officials are aware of HTS’s recent developments, but seem so far unwilling to intervene, as they prefer to keep them with a weak leadership rather than prohibit and fight them, risking recomposing them ideologically and propagandistically and thus potentially causing them to take over and restructure [3].
In any case, however, Hurras al-Din survives, and potentially, should Saif al-Adl ascend to the leadership of al-Qaeda, the Syrian offshoot could regain orders and logistical and financial support, as well as propaganda, since one of the main proponents of the Qaedist presence in Syria and responsible for the HaD file, was precisely the Egyptian leader.
[1] Interview with Muzamjir al-Sham.
[2]Private interview with researcher and analyst Orwa Ajjoub.
[3] Information was received in a private interview with researcher and analyst Jerome Drevon.
Analysis appeared in Akhbar al-Aan Tv Media on 05/02/2023. حراس الدين.. فرع القاعدة في بلاد الشام يصارع من أجل البقاء (akhbaralaan.net)
Daniele Garofalo is a researcher and analyst on Jihadist terrorism and an expert in monitoring Jihadist media channels.
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