The Tawhid Brigade is one of Syria’s largest armed rebel groups fighting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. It was formed in July 2012, in the days before the rebels advanced into the city of Aleppo. It is still considered one of the biggest groups in northern Syria, and it dominates much of the insurgency around Aleppo, having grown out of rural towns like Anadan, Marea, Azaz, Tel Rifaat, and Hreitan.

While the Tawhid Brigade has always had an Islamist bent, it has also been a primary recipient of support from the states backing the Syrian insurgency and was for a time considered part of the nebulous rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). It supported the creation of the FSA’s most recent attempt at a joint command structure, the Supreme Military Council (SMC), in December 2012. But at the same time, the Tawhid Brigade had its own sources of support and didn’t seem to pay much attention to the SMC or its political wing, the Western-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

From the start, two men led the Tawhid Brigade: Abdul-Aziz Salameh, its supreme leader in charge of political affairs, and Abdel Qader Saleh, who ran military affairs. Saleh, in particular, emerged as a popular figure within the insurgency, but in November 2013 he was killed in an airstrike, along with several other Tawhid Brigade leaders.

In September 2013, the Tawhid Brigade had begun to distance itself from the National Coalition and its budding executive branch, a government-in-exile led by Prime Minister Ahmed Toume. In October, the Tawhid Brigade was part of a group of Islamist factions that declared that any opposition member going to the planned Geneva II peace conference would be considered a traitor to the revolution. The following month, the Tawhid Brigade participated in the creation of the Islamic Front, a major coalition that has clearly marked its distance from both the SMC and the National Coalition.

Abul-Hassan is the name used by a Syrian media activist from the Aleppo countryside who has long served as the official spokesperson of the Tawhid Brigade. He has kindly agreed to answer some questions for Syria in Crisis.