Sayf Balud

Sayf Balud is an ethnic Syrian Turkmen from Bizaah, Aleppo Governorate.[2][7] According to the news site El-Dorar, he was originally a First Lieutenant in the Syrian Army and rebelled when the Syrian Civil War erupted.[8] According to Muhammad al-Binshi, he initially joined the Abu Bakr Sadiq Brigades, a "moderate" rebel group, in the early insurgency phase of the Syrian Civil War.[7][9] In 2012, he had become a "gunman" serving in the al-Tawhid Brigade, taking part in the Battle of Aleppo.[2] By spring 2013, he fought as part of the Free Syrian Army in operations around Kuweires Military Aviation Institute.[9]

In summer 2013, Sayf Balud fought in a rebel group alongside ISIL against Kurdish-majority factions such as the People's Protection Units (YPG) in the northern Aleppo countryside. In one instance, he appeared in an ISIL propaganda video in which prisoners of war, labelled as "PKK members", were presented at a mosque in Qabasin. The video showed how an ISIL member, with Sayf Balud at his side, was talking to the prisoners and giving them "a lesson in 'repentance'".[9] According to analyst Nicholas Heras, by mid-2013 ISIL had become so powerful in the region around al-Bab that many local insurgents joined the organization, including Sayf Balud and other members of his family. His exact motivations for doing so remain unknown. An intelligence insider told Heras, however, that Sayf Balud was actually an agent of the Turkish intelligence service MİT who acted as spy within ISIL. In any case, Sayf Balud reportedly became an "important aide" to the local ISIL commander, acting as liaison between the organization and other rebels. He reportedly played a major role in consolidating ISIL's grip on the area of al-Bab and its surroundings. His service with ISIL lasted until the first half of 2014, when he and members of his family defected and fled to Turkey.[2] Based on information gathered by Heras, researcher Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi argued that Sayf Balud's escape to Turkey might have resulted from ISIL discovering that he was working for the Turkish intelligence. In contrast, his later unit – the Hamza Division – would claim that Sayf Balud had never served ISIL and had been actually imprisoned by the organization in Aleppo's al-Uyun hospital in the time from 2013 to 2014, before being rescued by other rebel factions.[9][lower-alpha 2]

By late 2014, Sayf Balud was back in Syria and had risen to sub-commander in the Hazzm Movement, a rebel group vetted and supported by the CIA. At the time, he fought at al-Ma'amal.[9][2] Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi speculated that Sayf Balud's rapid rise within the Hazzm Movement despite previous interactions with ISIL could have been due to connections with the Turkish intelligence.[9] As part of the Hazzm Movement, he fought in Aleppo's Industrial City and Handarat in late 2014.[11]

He officially joined the Hamza Brigade around 2015,[9] although he had already been connected to the group beforehand, acting as one of its recruiters in Aleppo. Around 2015, he was possibly part of the United States Armed Forces' Syrian Train and Equip Program at the invitation of Turkey.[11] Although initially one among several sub-commanders of the Hamza Brigade, he was promoted to its overall leader after the death of its previous commander, Yasser Abu al-Sheikh in early 2016.[11] He consequently became the leader[9] of the Hamza Division which was a merger of the Hamza Brigade with several other groups, organized in April 2016.[8][12] As overall commander, Sayf Balud organized a "special forces" elite unit within the Hamza Division.[11]

He was also promoted to brigadier general,[3] and led his forces during the Turkish-led Operation Euphrates Shield against ISIL.[9][3] Around this time, he increasingly became "a prominent public face" of the anti-ISIL campaign waged by Turkey and its Syrian allies.[11] After al-Bab was captured from ISIL in March 2017, Sayf Balud was appointed de facto military governor of the city and its surroundings by Turkey.[1] Meanwhile, the Hamza Division became part of the Syrian National Army (SNA) as the "Second Division", with Sayf Balud overseeing the unit's further expansion and improvement in training.[1] In May 2018, his brother Hamed Balud (alias "Yaba") was involved in a scandal as he and other Hamza Division fighters attacked three hospitals in and around al-Bab, possibly to terrorize local supporters of ISIL and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Hamed was filmed and subsequently arrested, but managed to escape.[13] The affair surrounding his brother caused considerable local opposition against the Hamza Division and Sayf Balud, as he had personally appointed Hamad to run al-Bab's administration. In spite of the scandal, Sayf was able to maintain his position thanks to Turkish support.[1]

Sayf Balud later fought against the SDF in Operation Olive Branch, assisting in the conquest of the PYD-governed Afrin Canton.[9] According to Heras, Sayf and the Hamza Division caused considerable ethnic tensions during and after the capture of Afrin, as they favored Turkmen. However, Sayf was reportedly awarded a personal audience with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for his role in Afrin.[14] According to Heras, "there [was] a definite sense within the opposition movement" by 2018 that Sayf was factually far more powerful within the SNA as his formal rank would suggest, thanks to the "patronage of Turkey".[15] Sayf led his unit during the Northwestern Syria offensive (April–August 2019), publicly declaring that rebel rocket attacks on Nubl and al-Zahraa were meant as retribution for government bombardments of Idlib and Hama.[16]

In 2020, he helped to recruit 500 Hamza Division fighters who allegedly served in a conflict for Nagorno-Karabakh, fighting for Azerbaijan against Armenia.[7] At the time, The Daily Beast published an article which portrayed Sayf Balud as an "ISIS Warlord" who had fought for the Jihadist movement for several years before defecting to Turkey. Large parts of this story were consequently debunked by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, prompting the Daily Beast to correct the article.[9]

• Heras, Nicholas (November 2018). "Turkey's Man in Syria—Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr" (PDF). Militant Leadership Monitor. Washington, D.C.: Jamestown Foundation. 9 (11): 11–16.