Naomi Jabois
Mizanaz (Syria), December 6 (EFE). – When Mohammad Shawash and other associates of the Islamist alliance Levant Liberation Organization launched the offensive that ended Bashar al-Assad’s regime a year ago, they could not have imagined how little resistance they would face and how short-lived the battles they would fight would be.
From what were then the last opposition strongholds in Syria, Islamist and pro-Turkish groups led by the agency reached the northeastern city of Aleppo, the country’s commercial capital, in just three days and reached Damascus in just another week.
“We thought it would be much more difficult and we were surprised that there was no one in many places we went. We expected more detours. Like the battle in 2020, we thought it would be even bigger than this,” Shawash told EFE.
That year, al-Assad’s forces carried out a bloody operation to recapture areas in the northwest of the country, where a ceasefire was later reached between Russia, an ally of the former president’s regime, and Turkey, a supporter of the then-Syrian opposition.
Shawash, who took up arms in 2013, in the early years of the war and when he was just 18 years old, clearly remembers the battles of 2020 in Mizanaz, the same western Aleppo village where he is now.
“There is no comparison, 2020 was much stronger, the bombings were intense, it was unbearable. In 2024 there was some resistance, but definitely not like in 2020,” says the fighter.
“You can see it in the destruction,” he notes, pointing to the buildings destroyed by the Mizanaz bombings five years ago. A year ago, however, not a single bullet was fired in the same city.
What was much more important in the fight to “liberate” Syria was preparation.
Shawash says it took about three to four months in special training camps where each fighter was assigned a specific role. However, they trained blindly as only the “great leaders” knew about the plans.
“They simply told us that there was a battle and they took away our phones, it was forbidden to leave the room we were in. We were like that for a week until the battle, they gave us our phones the day before, mainly for using maps,” he remembers.
Ahmad Shawash, who also took part in the offensive a year ago with the Levant Liberation Organization, confirmed to EFE that they were only informed about the offensive a week in advance and that their cell phones were taken away in order to avoid leaks.
“We knew there was a battle coming, but we didn’t know how far it would go, they didn’t inform us,” he says.
“I thought it would be a normal fight. Given the resistance we faced in 2020, we did not expect that this time we would take it all,” adds the young man, who, like the majority, is surprised at the ease with which a family that has clung to power in Syria for more than half a century falls.
The offensive began on November 27, 2024 in the rural areas of western Aleppo province.
For Ahmad’s unit, the work began a little later with the entry into Mizanaz itself and the neighboring towns, where they carried out what he described as a “combing operation” since “no one” was there when they arrived, he claims.
According to him, their main clashes over 24 hours occurred in the town of Saraqib (northwest), which was captured from them by Al-Assad’s forces in 2020.
For his part, Mohammad Shawash took part in the first clashes in the city of Qobtan al Jabal (Northwest) from the first minute and entered the city of Aleppo with his brigade colleagues after three days of clashes in different places with “morning shifts and night shifts”.
They encountered their last resistance in the neighboring province of Hama, specifically in the Salamiya area, where, according to him, they fought fierce battles with “the Iranians” for three or four days.
The at least 170,000 troops al-Assad had when he was overthrown included, according to the most conservative estimates, the Iranian militias and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which supported him on the ground, as well as air support from Moscow.
For this reason, the timing chosen for the offensive in 2024 was crucial, as Hezbollah was decimated in a matter of hours by a war against Israel at home and against Iran. Still, some believe the ease with which Al Assad fell smacks of an earlier agreement between international powers.
For Shawash, the Salamiya battles were the last, as from there to Damascus there were only “retreats” on the enemy side without resistance.
“What we expected happened in such a simple way. We didn’t expect this release, it was a great joy,” he concluded. EFE
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