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More tribes join Syrian rebels
[ARA News] A group of Arab rebel fighters from the Baggara and Shaitat tribes in rural Deir ez-Zor have left the Ahmad Jarba’s Syrian Elite Forces and joined the Deir ez-Zor military council, according to military sources.The Deir ez-Zor Military Council has been established recently by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to combat ISIS in eastern Syria. The seven battalions of the two tribes said in a statement on Friday they initially joined the opposition-led Elite Forces to participate in battles to free cities and villages from ISIS. “Unfortunately, many problems accompanied our work and many vague questions surfaced, such as the absence of a project, or a clear work program of these forces and lack of seriousness in the revolutionary work,” the groups said in a joint statement. “We, the seven battalions of Baggara and Shaitat tribes, split from the Elite Forces and joined the Deir ez-Zor military council and consider the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] as our reference and military leadership and we are working under its banner to liberate our city from the Daesh [ISIS] terrorist abomination,” the groups said. “We thank also the leadership of the Syrian Democratic Forces for receiving us and giving us the opportunity to join their ranks to fight terrorism. We pledge to our martyrs and people, that we will spare no efforts to defend them,” the battalions said. Nicholas A. Heras, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), working in the Middle East Security Program, told ARA News: “SDF is now the vehicle, cutting down on groups outside of it. This is a big win for the SDF, and the Coalition. It makes the Deir al-Zoir Military Council more capable of being the foundation of a hold force if the Coalition decides to engage in a campaign to seize Deir al-Zor.” Posted by: badanov 2017-08-27 |
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