In a fancy apartment in the Adawi district of Damascus lives Abu Muhammad, one of the most vicious criminals of Bashar al-Assad's regime has shed a lot Syrian blood.
Yet, to much irony, he is the shadow man of the Assad regime. To the extent that obtaining news of his or even a picture revealing his face is very difficult than finding a picture of a senior intelligence officer.
He is the man who contributed to the killing of tens of thousands of Syrians and the destruction of their property as he heads the artillery and missile directorate in the army of the regime.
According verified information of Zaman al-Wasl, Major General Jumaa al-Jassim, director of the artillery and missile department, was born in small village near Senjar town in northern Idlib province. He was supposed to retire in 2014, but regime’s trust in and its reliance on his criminal act prompted him to extend his term of office.
Juma al-Jassim (pictured) was born in 1954 to a father named Mohamed and a mother called Zeida. He belongs to the Hadideen tribe, the same tribe of the defense minister of the regime, Fahad Jassim al-Fareij, from Rihan in the countryside of Hama.
Fareij and al-Jassim have a tribal and family relationship, which in the end is only a detail of their close alliance in the framework of strict loyalty to the regime and strict implementation of its orders.
Activists and opposition figures from the Hadideen tribe warned both Al-Farij and Al-Jassim of continuing to serve the regime, but the two men did not care about it at all and went on fighting and killing the Syrian people, including members of their clan who were scattered in large areas of Syria especially in the rural Idlib and Hama.
Al-Jassim is currently participating in the battles of the northern Hama countryside where the regime has been involved there as being the "best" in its view to fight the people of that region, and know the terrain of the land and the nature of its population.
The regime has already assigned to al-Jassim highly sensitive leadership positions and battles especially in the Homs and Hama villages.
Despite his very sensitive position and his role in directing guns and rockets throughout Syria, it was very strange and suspicious that al-Jassim would not be on the European or American sanctions lists. The lists which include names of hundreds of entities and personalities suspected of involvement in the killing of Syrians, and lower ranked figures may be included in these lists.
In the fall of 2016, Washington, through its Permanent Representative in the Security Council, vowed to prosecute and prosecute war criminals in Syria, referring to 12 officers by name, including three senior officers and rocket launchers: Major General Tahir Hamid Khalil, Major General Jawdat Mawas and General Adnan Hilweh without mentioning al-Jassim at all.
Al-Jassim has two sons. Mohamed and Ahmad, First Lieutenant in the regime army.
-Self-distancing-
The relationship between some tribal leaders and their "leaders" in the Assad regime has always raised suspicion among Syrians, especially after the revolution, which was supposed to put these leaders and "dignitaries" automatically on the right side, but they chose notto take the path of the people and did not care about the unity of their clans.
Al-Hadideen is one of the most prominent tribes that have been distorted by figures such as al-Fareej and al-Jassim, and the son of the leader of the Hadideen throughout Syria, Nuri Nawaf Saleh al-Jarkh who were executed by the formerly known Nusra Front, ex al-Qaeda branch in Syria.
In the summer of 2015, al-Nusra Front Nayef and Abdel Hadi, the son of the sheikh of the Hadideen sheikhs, on charges of working to extend the forces of the regime (regime forces were besieged then at the Abu Zuhur military airport) with food and water.
This move raised more doubts about the true affiliation of the tribe leaders and bring back to the forefront them following the Shiite like other prominent tribe leaders. Their affiliation to Ahl al-Bayt - regardless of the credibility of this affiliation - is an easy entry point for the process of becoming Shiites which lead to them standing on the side of the regime. Syrians have witnessed such behavior in the behavior of several people affiliated with famous tribes such as the Baggara, Hadideen and others who have become the buttocks of sectarianism.
The Hadidien is one of the tribes that came to Syria. Their homes were on the outskirts of Mosul, before they migrated from there due to conflicts according to unverified narratives.
Soon after their transformation from their original homes, the Hadidis chose to be distributed in the countryside of different governorates of Syria, such as Idlib, Hama, Aleppo and Hassakeh.
In one of her most intriguing articles, Syrian novelist Lina Hoyan al-Hassan discusses the renewed old conflict between the Muawali and Haddid tribes, including the 40-year-long war that ended in many French-brokered times during their occupation of Syria.
Al-Hassan refers to the current and raging conflict between the "Muwali" and "the Hadidin tribes on the the background of their conflicting positions with or against the Syrian regime.
The novelist chronicles the biography of the father of Sheikh Al-Hadidiin, "Nawaf Al-Saleh" born in 1888, who assumed the presidency in 1915 and describes him as a "descendant of Constantinople" and an officer in the Turkish army. He then sought to join the Arab government formed in Syria following the "Great Arab Revolution" Membership of the Syrian National Assembly (parliament) in 1928.
Al-Hassan says that Nawaf was fluent in French and Turkish, and that his contact with General Gourou led to the tribe being excluded from the French tyranny. He was killed by a "slave of the Mawali tribe" in Aleppo in 1949 when he was leaving the Baron Hotel, .
At the end of her article published in 2013, al-Hassan concludes that Hadidin followed the policy of self-distancing since the Ottoman period through the French era to the current regime."
This is in terms of the extension of Jumaa al-Jassim. As for the military, the officer who rarely appears publicly assumes the position of chief of the most deadly weapons of the regime artillery and rockets who killed and destroyed Syrians.
It is statistically proven that the regime power lies in the artillery (portable and trailer) and rockets (with its various ranges).
There are no exact numbers for the number of guns owned by the system, but it is estimated in the thousands, for example, 600 130-mm heavy-duty artillery, which modified the system at a range of up to 40 km, and the cannon has the ability to launch various types of missiles, including chemical.
Alongside the 130 field cannon, there are about 400 122-mm self-propelled artillery, about 50 pieces of the 152-mm giant propulsion, as well as hundreds of portable guns.
As for the missile weapon, Brigadier-General Ahmed Berri said in a brief review he published, "Syria is one of the largest missile forces in the developing world." There is no specific number of different types of missiles owned by the regime, but estimates go to the regime had Of surface-to-surface missiles (range between 300 and 700 km) about 500 rockets, before firing about half of the cities and Syrian countries.
On the side of these missiles are tactical missiles such as Luna and Tuchka, estimated to have about 500 rockets. The system is used in various battles and bombardment of areas beyond its control, as well as countless rocket launchers.
The regime relied on artillery and rockets in many of its destructive and deadly attacks, including the horrific chemical massacre in Al-Ghouta (summer 2013), where the missiles carried heads containing toxic gases before firing them at civilians while they were sleeping, killing about 1,500 people.
The effects of firing of long-range rockets into Syrian cities especially in Aleppo can still be seen, and it can be imagined that it is an area hit by a massive earthquake
