Order of battle

Mhebeldin set up a headquarters unit with radios, satellite phones and even an Internet connection. He formed a media detachment to shoot videos and post them on Youtube. Early on the tailor hosted reporters from all over the world but stopped after an Iranian reporter published a negative story.

Mhebeldin was there when American correspondent Marie Colvin and French reporter Remi Ochlik were killed in Baba Amr in February 2012.

He divided his fighters into four frontline companies each of 20 men. The companies are each assigned to a different geographical sector of Al Qusayr. The sectors change in order to rotate companies through the heaviest fighting, giving each a chance to rest between combat.

The tailor commander is adamant that the companies must not mingle; only their officers interact. Command and control is by radio, as the Syrian government has knocked out cellular service—not to mention water and power—in rebel-held areas. To direct his soldiers from the hospital, Mhebeldin calls his deputy commander on his cell phone, and the deputy—much closer to the battlefield—passes along the orders by radio.

Once a month the officers assess their units’ supply needs and report to Mhebeldin. Excess supply items in one company are spread among the neighboring units.

Companies expecting the heaviest combat get extra consignments of ammunition and weapons.

Independent at first, today the Al Kahf battalion has joined the Abu Shaker Brigade—one of four brigades in Al Qusayr that belong to the Farouk Division, arguably the Free Syrian Army’s most professional combat formation. The brigade shares the 20 captured tanks, moving them between sectors as needed.

The tailor has encountered radical Islamist fighters but doesn’t share the world’s concern. “We’re all human beings,” he says.

In the beginning Mhebeldin and his men paid for their own weapons and supplies or stole them from the Syrian army. Now they are financed by foreigners that the tailor declines to name because, he explains, “I want it to continue.” The Farouk Division is known to receive non-lethal supplies from an organization of Syrian expats funded in great part by the U.S. State Department.

Ammo has run out in the middle of battle. Once the Al Kahf fighters even resorted to hurling rocks at attacking Hezbollah militants. But the battalion’s biggest need is medicine and medical training. When Mhebeldin was wounded, it was the Red Cross that evacuated him across the border into Lebanon and to a rudimentary hospital sympathetic to the rebel cause.