The Guardian reports:

Syrian rebels began planning the military assault that toppled the Assad regime a year ago, in a highly disciplined operation in which a new drone unit was deployed and where there was close coordination between opposition groups around the country, the top military commander of the main rebel group has revealed.

In his first interview with foreign media since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s 54-year-rule, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing, spoke about how his group, which was based in the country’s north-west, communicated with rebels in the south to create a unified war room with the goal of ultimately surrounding Damascus from both directions.

He said that though the planning for the operation to oust Assad, dubbed “deterring aggression”, had started a year ago, the group had been preparing for years.

Since 2019, HTS has been developing a military doctrine that it used to turn fighters coming from disparate, disorganised opposition and jihadist groups into a disciplined fighting force.

“After the last campaign [August 2019], during which we lost significant territory, all revolutionary factions realised the critical danger – the fundamental problem was the absence of unified leadership and control over battle,” al-Hamwi, 40, who has overseen the military wing for five years, said during the interview in Jableh, a former regime stronghold. [Continue reading…]