The United States prepared a rebel force to join the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, fighters have claimed.
British and American-trained fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a group aligned against Islamic State, were told “this is your moment” in a briefing by US Special Forces before Assad was ousted.
In the first indication that Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, the RCA revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad regime.
“They did not tell us how it would happen,” Capt Bashar al-Mashadani, an RCA commander, told The Telegraph from a former Syrian army air base used by Russia on the outskirts of the city of Palmyra.
“We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”
Having worked with the RCA to dismantle the Islamic State’s Syrian caliphate, the US still pays its fighters a salary to prevent the terror group’s resurgence.
In the weeks before the briefing at the US-controlled Al-Tanf air base on the border of Iraq, according to Capt Mashadani, the RCA’s ranks were swollen by smaller freelance units like his brought under its command.
As the main rebel force swept south to Damascus in a lightning offensive towards the end of last month, the RCA advanced out of Al Tanf and now occupies roughly one fifth of the country, including pockets of territory in the north of the capital.
US military commanders in Syria ordered the advance to prevent remnants of Isis – which occupied much of the north-east of the country until its defeat in 2019, taking advantage of a power vacuum if Assad fell – senior RCA officers said.
It indicates not only that Washington knew about the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which toppled the Assad regime on Dec 8, but that it had precise intelligence about its scale.
Among the chief targets of the US-backed operation was Palmyra, fabled for its Greco-Roman ruins, which was occupied by Isis between 2015 and 2017.
The ancient desert town 150 miles north-west of Damascus is considered a vital bridgehead against Isis and was heavily defended by Russia and Iran-backed militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, until Assad’s fall.
RCA fighters who captured the Russian-controlled Syrian air base on the outskirts of the town last week said they had been told to prepare for Assad’s possible fall in early November, nearly three weeks before the offensive began.
Until one month earlier, Capt Mashadani had been second-in-command of the Abu Khatab brigade. This small unit of 150 men was created by US Special Forces and trained by their British counterparts in Jordan until 2016, to hunt down Isis fighters near Deir ez-Zor, a city in eastern Syria.
There were several such Sunni desert units operating out of Al Tanf. They fought separately from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led militia that controls much of the country’s north-east.
But, in early October, Capt Mashadani and his fellow commanders said, American officers at Al Tanf brought the Abu Khatab brigade and other units under the joint command of the RCA.
The RCA’s ranks grew from about 800 to as many as 3,000 as a result, he said. All members of the force continued to be armed by the US and to receive their salary of $400 (£315) a month, nearly 12 times what the soldiers in the now defunct Syrian army were paid.
As the offensive began, RCA forces fanned out across the eastern desert, taking control of key roads. They also joined up with a rebel faction in the southern city of Dera’a that reached Damascus before HTS.
Capt Mashadani said the RCA and the fighters of HTS, which is led by Syria’s interim leader Mohammed al-Jolani, were co-operating, and communication between the two forces was being co-ordinated by the Americans at Al-Tanf.
As Syria’s 13-year civil war ground on, it threw up a bewildering array of militias and alliances, most of them backed by foreign powers.
It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017.
It is equally ironic that rebel factions supported by the US are co-operating with those backed by Turkey in places like Palmyra, while fighting against each other elsewhere in the country.
While Turkey opposed the US-supported Kurds in Syria, it was in full agreement about the threat posed by Isis.
In recent days, the US has carried out dozens of air strikes on Isis positions even as its Kurdish allies have come under sustained attack from Syrian factions supported by Turkey.
The Isis threat is clear in the town of Palmyra, which was largely destroyed in the Russian-led battle to recapture it in 2017 and remains mostly abandoned.
Isis fighters are positioned in the hills to the south-west of the town and have effective control of parts of the highway to Damascus, said Abdulrazzaq Abu Khatib, a commander in the Turkey-backed Falcons of the Levant Brigade, which controls central Palmyra.
The Falcons led the offensive that captured Palmyra, with casualties suffered both by his men and by Hezbollah, Mr Khatib said. Another five of his men died on Tuesday while trying to clear a building booby-trapped by the retreating Russians, he added.
An offensive against Isis in the area was likely to begin next month once Palmyra was fully secured, Mr Khatib said.
