The major issue in Syria that has been under investigation for seven months lies in the following big question:
Why do some Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham leaders insist on excluding qualified officers and soldiers from the army and police who defected from Assad?
There are two versions of the story:
The first version says that the reason is pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to exclude these people from the scene under the pretext that they are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
However, after investigating and learning their details closely over a period of fourteen years, it became clear that a portion of qualified officers and personnel in the army and the police are moderate Sunnis in Syria, in addition to those who belong to other non-sunni Syrian components.
Therefore, the first story cannot be relied upon, despite the validity of the Saudi-Emirati pressure.
The correct narrative, based on real and documented information, that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) “was” part of the extremist Islamist organization al-Qaeda, which was founded primarily on the idea of an Islamic caliphate, from which the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIS) emerged.
Despite the fact that al-Julani (now Ahmed al-Sharaa) repeatedly announced its separation from al-Qaeda, but there are still leaders from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham linked to al-Qaeda, who are in the decision-making circle in Syria.
They are the ones who prevent the return of academically qualified army and police officers and personnel, and they who imposed to form the army and police from extremist Islamic factions affiliated with al-Qaeda.
