Former ISIS Leader is Named Commander of US-Sponsored Militia in Syria
Jose Nino
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On February 29, 2024, the Syria Free Army (SFA), appointed a former ISIS leader to serve as its commander. The SFA is a militia that receives support from the United States government and is trained inside the US’s Al-tanf base in eastern Syria.
“Today, the Syrian Free Army conducted a change of command and welcomed a new commander of the SFA. We thank COL Farid al-Qasim for 16 months of dedicated service to the SFA, the local community, and the 55-kilometer area,” the SFA declared on February 29 through its Facebook page.
“We are excited for the new opportunities that [Colonel Salem Turki al-Antari] will bring to the SFA and the leadership he will provide. This step continues the SFA mission in the Region to secure and stabilize the 55 and defeat Da’esh (ISIS),” the statement continued.
An SFA spokesman informed the Syrian news outlet Enab Baladi that the change in leadership was a normal occurrence and not the product of a dispute or internal political squabble.
He stressed that American authorities did not interfere in the appointment, as it was an internal faction that made this move. By contrast, Muhammad al-Khalidi, the leaders of a local council in the Al-Rukban area in eastern Syria — a zone occupied by US forces — said that Qasim had been “provoking tribal divisions in the region.”
Salem Turki al-Antari, the replacement for al-Qasim, hails from the Syrian city of Palmyra. In 2014, he joined under the nom de guerre Abu Saddam al-Ansari. ISIS would end up appointing him as the Emir of the Badia desert region in Homs.
From 2015 to 2017, al-Antari participated in the ISIS capture of Palmyra and the subsequent battles with the Syrian army. Al-Antari would later join the Ahrar al-Sharqiyah faction of the Syrian National Army (SNA) militant coalition in 2017, which has received support from Turkey.
After US-backed Kurdish captured Raqqa in 2017, the SNA provided aid to many ISIS fighters and commanders by allowing them to escape into SNA territory and get incorporated into SNA factions.
Al-Antari participated in the Turkish-SNA assault on the northeastern city of Ras al-Ayn in 2019, which is still under attack well into the present.
Al-Antari would later join the Maghawir al-Thawra militant group, which in 2019 integrated itself as a member of the US-sponsored Syria Free Army (SFA) that is currently based in the American base in Al-Tanf.
The US army has been training the aforementioned militants inside Al-Tanf under the justification of fighting ISIS. Nevertheless, ISIS cells are still very active in the Syrian desert, which is in the geographic proximity of the Al-Tanf base. Syrian and Russian authorities have repeatedly blamed the US for providing logistical aid to ISIS in these areas. In the past, Russia has carried out airstrikes on the Al-Tnf base and militants in the proximity.
Russia has launched airstrikes on the Al-Tanf base and militants located in its vicinity in the past. The US is very likely providing aid to ISIS in some direct or indirect fashion, The fact is that the US, ISIS, and Israel have become strange bedfellows in the fight to topple the government of Syria.
Such unholy alliances are permanent fixtures of the wacky foreign policy agenda the US pursues. By intervening abroad, the US is simply asking for trouble. At this point, American policymakers need to start considering non-intervention in foreign affairs.
Playing too much with the interventionist fire will eventually get the US burned.
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