Yusuf al-'Azma Brigade
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The Yusuf al-'Azma Brigade was a small Kurdish Free Syrian Army group based in the town of Qabasin, in the al-Bab region of Aleppo governorate. Named after the famed Syrian independence figure, it was formed in December 2012 as part of the Kurdish Military Council. Its leader, Bassam Hajji Mustafa, was originally a communist and a follower of Qadri Jamil, who was expelled from the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) and went on to found the People's Will Party. Mustafa founded the Yusuf al-'Azma Brigade after his efforts to push Jamil to the opposition failed. Alongside the Salah al-Din Ayyubi Brigade, the Yusuf al-'Azma Brigade was one of the more stridently anti-PYD/YPG factions of the KMC and worked closely with other rebel groups in the area. But over the course of 2013 the group faced harassment from sectarians who were hostile to any kind of Kurdish expression. When ISIS conquered the al-Bab region in November of that year, the brigade splintered; some fighters joined Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, while one subcommander (Mahmoud Khallo) would go on to form Liwa Ahfad Salah al-Din two years later. The remaining members fled to YPG-controlled territory and eventually helped retake Qabasin and al-Bab from ISIS' successor, the Islamic Emirate.