ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani on Thursday called on Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani not to allow Iraqi armed groups to get involved in their ongoing war against the Syrian regime, claiming that his fighters will not pose a threat to Iraq’s national security. Jolani, in a video message published on Telegram and addressing Sudani, urged the Iraqi prime minister to “prevent Iraq from getting involved” in the conflict and “to do what is required to prevent the Popular Mobilization Forces [PMF] of Iraq from supporting this vanishing regime,” referring to Bashar al-Assad’s rule. The PMF is a former paramilitary umbrella group of predominantly Shiite armed forces that was established in 2014 following a fatwa in response to the Islamic State (ISIS) attack. It has been embedded in Iraq's security apparatus. They are officially under the rule of Sudani as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces but sometimes they do not follow his orders. A coalition of Syrian rebels led by the HTS launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army over the past week. They took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the most populated city in the country, and later advanced their offensive into the strategic central Hama province, capturing the city on Thursday with the Syrian army announcing its withdrawal. On Saturday, Jolani said they would not stop until they reached the capital Damascus. The Syrian army said on Thursday that it downed two “enemy” drones in Damascus without explicitly blaming any party. “The revolution is not linked to what happens in Iraq, and on the contrary, we wish to have strategic, economic, and political relations as well as social communication as part of the new Syria after the end of this criminal regime,” the HTS leader said. Baghdad views instability in Syria as a direct threat to its own security, especially given concerns over terrorist activities on the two countries’ shared 600-kilometer border. On Thursday, a joint force from the Iraqi army and PMF in the western Anbar province headed to the Syrian border to enforce the border with Syria. On Monday, the head of Iraq’s pro-Iran PMF, Falih al-Fayyadh, said that Syria’s conflict threatens Iraq’s national security and denied reports of the group's fighters being sent to aid Assad’s regime. The PMF’s head of operations in Anbar, Qassim Muslih, on Thursday, stated on the group’s media platform that the operation was launched following directives from Prime Minister Sudani “to support and back up the border police.” Muslih added that the operation aims “to enhance the readiness” of security forces in the event of an “emergency.” “There are a lot of fears and concerns across Iraq that what is unfolding in Syria will reach Iraq, and I decisively say that such an idea is 100 percent false,” Jolani emphasized. HTS is the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and the prominent force among dozens of rebel factions in the northwest. The group has long controlled a rebel enclave in the northwestern province of Idlib. It has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. Syrians rose against the Assad regime in 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, left millions more in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
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