Hawar Kilis Operations Room


The Hawar Kilis Operations Room was a Syrian rebel coalition formed in the village of Hawar Kilis in April 2016 in the northern Aleppo Governorate on the Syria–Turkey border.
As part of the Syrian Train and Equip Program, many groups in the coalition were supplied with Thuraya satellite phones by the United States.
Most factions within the operations room form a large component of the Syrian National Army, which was, with Turkish backing, formed around the Operations Room.

Member groups

The Hawar Kilis Operations Room consists of three military "blocs": the Victory Bloc, the Sultan Murad Bloc, and the Levant Bloc. At the end of October 2016, a security committee was formed to man checkpoints in the villages and towns it controls. A judicial committee to supervise courts was also established.

History

The coalition took part in the northern Aleppo offensive, beginning with April 2016, and captured several villages in northern Aleppo overlooking al-Rai from ISIL, before entering al-Rai itself. However, ISIL soon launched a large-scale counteroffensive and recaptured most of the villages, including al-Rai.
In early October 2016 the group formed the Akhtarin Military Council which captured several villages and the town of Akhtarin from ISIL as part of the 2016 Dabiq offensive, ending with the capture of Dabiq and several more other villages, linking Mare' with al-Rai.
On 28 October the group formed the "Victory Bloc" operations room during the western al-Bab offensive.
On 28 January 2017, after the formation of Tahrir al-Sham which the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement's main branch became part of, the Zenki Movement's northern Aleppo branch working with Hawar Kilis Operations Room defected to the Sham Legion and formed the Revolutionary Knights Brigade.
On 7 June 2017, a unit in the Hawar Kilis Operations Room defected to the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In July 2017, the commander of Liwa Ahfad Saladin, Mahmoud Khallo, declared that the group would not participate in a planned Turkish-led offensive against the SDF in the Afrin Canton and the Shahba region. Following the announcement, the group was arrested and disarmed by the Levant Front and the Turkish Army. After being released soon after, Khallo protested against his unit's treatment and criticized that Turkey was apparently only interested in using the Syrian militias to further its own strategic goals. He also said that Liwa Ahfad Saladin, now without weapons, would set up a political party.
On 26 August 2017, the Hawar Kilis Operations Room condemned Riad al-Asaad and accused him of conspiring with al-Qaeda after he attended a conference held by Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib.