Nov 11, 2013

ALEPPO, Syria — Khaled Saraj, better known as Khaled Hayani, is a notorious rebel warlord operating in and around Aleppo. He’s a native of the town of Hayan — hence, his nickname — just a few kilometers on the Gaziantep highway north of Aleppo. He was largely unknown from his impoverished background right up until the armed conflict erupted in Aleppo province. Soon after, he formed his own militia, the Martyrs of Badr, and through various unsavory activities quickly amassed a small fortune, all in the name of the revolution and fighting against the Syrian regime.

His infamy stems from his well-documented escapades, including organized looting, kidnapping, extortion, highway robbery and indiscriminate shelling of civilians adjacent to areas his faction controls with his improvised and lethal Jehanem (Hell) canon. Along with several other warlords now infamous throughout Aleppo for their reign of crime and terror, he stands out as particularly noxious for his undisguised contempt for the city of Aleppo and its residents.

His more outrageous crimes were carried out in the industrial zone of Liramoun, on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, where his men systematically looted factories and warehouses, often driving off with tons of goods in large trucks. They even dismantled factory machinery, shipping it off across the border to Turkey to be sold to unscrupulous dealers for a fraction of its worth. This, as you can imagine, caused great consternation and bitterness across the city, an important industrial hub in the region. He is even reported to have called factory owners, offering to sell them back their stolen goods at a discount, adding insult to injury.

But the crime he is perhaps most notorious for is the storming and subsequent mass looting of the Shiekh Maksud neighborhood. Residents there reported that straight after his men took the area one morning around dawn, dozens of car thieves arrived in pickup trucks and proceeded to calmly break into and drive off with all the parked cars, none of which were left by that afternoon. As he consolidated his control, he would also reportedly auction off entire buildings or blocks to the highest bidder. You pay his fee, get your men and trucks in, then steal whatever you wanted from the houses. Refrigerators, washing machines, TVs, furniture, clothes — anything you could carry. The unwillingness or perhaps the inability of other “good” rebel factions to do anything about his crimes has done much to damage and discredit the rebel fighters as a whole in Aleppo.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the people of Aleppo are more than happy to see him go, even if it is at the hands of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS). The group has already dispatched with another notorious warlord, Hasan Jazara, captured in the Sakhur neighborhood along with some of his men as ISIS swept into several areas of Aleppo late last month. He has reportedly been sentenced to death for his crimes. His execution was to be held Oct. 31, but there has been no confirmation that it was carried out. ISIS, for its part, has been playing a clever and slick media campaign, claiming that it is purging the rebel fighters of traitors, collaborators and criminals. After taking over the border town of Azaz, destroying the rebel faction Asefet el Shamal (the Northern Brigades) for allegedly collaborating with US and German intelligence, ISIS has now set its sights on other strategic areas in Aleppo, rooting out rival militias it accuses of criminal activity.