Al-Safwa Islamic Battalions

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This is an alternate history wiki. It mixes fact and fiction, and should not be mistaken for a reliable source.

Al-Safwa Islamic Battalions

Details
Active: 2013-2018
Area: Aleppo Governorate
Ideology: Moderate Sunni Islamism
Part of: Free Syrian Army
Operations Rooms: Alliance of Revolutionaries in Aleppo


The al-Safwa Islamic Battalions were a Free Syrian Army unit operating mainly in the Aleppo city region. It was created in January 2013 as part of Liwa al-Tawhid. It left Tawhid a few months later, with some fighters citing corruption and dissatisfaction with Tawhid's lack of opposition to ISIS and other radical jihadis. Al-Safwa joined the the anti-ISIS Army of Mujahideen soon after its formation in January 2014 but left again in March, this time citing criminality among the Army's other members. In January 2015, al-Safwa applied to join the recently-formed Levant Front, but it was rejected for being insufficiently Islamist. The fact that the Battalions' old parent group Liwa al-Tawhid was a major component of the Levant Front may have played a role in the rejection. From this point on, al-Safwa embraced an FSA identity. It was one of the more solidly Islamist groups within the FSA at this point, with several Aleppo Sufi conservative clerics lauding the group. Nevertheless, the CIA deemed it moderate enough to receive TOW missiles beginning in May 2016.