The new Syrian government is integrating a Central Asian terrorist group that is part of Al Qaeda’s network into its military, despite the objections of US President Donald Trump. The head of this terror group, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), is based in Afghanistan and issues orders to his followers in Syria.
On May 14, US President Donald Trump met with Syrian interim President Ahmad al Sharaa, who is listed as a terrorist by both Washington and the United Nations and once served as the head of Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate. In the meeting, President Trump gave the Syrian leader a number of demands, chief amongst them the removal of all foreign terrorists from Syria.
After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, the United States made the expulsion of foreign fighters a key prerequisite for lifting US sanctions. In March 2025, Washington formally demanded their removal in a letter to Damascus. However, Sharaa continued to delay actions, insisting that foreign fighters that helped in getting rid of Assad deserve respect.
On May 18, Syria’s Defense Ministry integrated the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP)—a Uighur jihadist group allied with Al Qaeda that has a presence in both Afghanistan and Syria—into the ranks of Sharaa’s newly formed army.
The decision to bring TIP into the Syrian military came shortly after Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra declared that all major armed factions were absorbed by the Ministry of Defense. TIP fighters were assigned to the newly created 84th Division, which is expected to be made up largely of Uighur militants and other foreign combatants. In December 2024, Sharaa promoted six foreign fighters to the rank of brigadier general, including TIP’s top commander in Syria, Abdulaziz Dawud Hudaberdi, also known by his nom de guerre, Zahid.
Zahid has played a central role in the group’s military operations in Syria since 2012. Recognized for his discipline and leadership, he was sent to Syria as TIP’s military commander during the early stages of the civil war. The TIP has fought under the banner of the Al Nusrah Front and its successor, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, both of which are listed by the US government as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Sharaa, who is a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, led both the Al Nusrah Front and Hayat Tahrir al Sham.
Zahid led key offensives in Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia, commanding over a thousand operations against Russian, Iranian, and Syrian regime forces. In 2021, he graduated from a military institution in Idlib.
With the integration of the TIP, which has thousands of fighters in the country, into the Syrian military, it is likely that other foreign jihadi groups such as the Katibat Imam al Bukhari, the Mujahidin Ghuroba Division, the Islamic Jihad Union, and Ajnad al Kavkaz, will be subsumed as well. Many of these groups have direct ties to Al Qaeda. (See the FDD’s Long War Journal report “Hayat Tahrir al Sham’s terror network in Syria” for details on these Al Qaeda-linked jihadist groups.)
The Turkistan Islamic Party and Al Qaeda
The TIP is a Uighur-led terrorist group that seeks to create an Islamic emirate in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and Central Asia. However, it is not just focused on this region; it is also part of Al Qaeda’s global network. The TIP has a strong presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria.
The TIP is led by Abdul Haq al Turkistani, a veteran jihadi with decades of experience who serves on Al Qaeda’s executive leadership council and currently resides in Afghanistan. Turkistani, also known as Maimaitiming Maimaiti, became the emir of the TIP in late 2003 after Hassan Mahsum, the group’s founder, was killed during clashes with Pakistani troops at an Al Qaeda training camp in South Waziristan in October of that year. Al Qaeda, the TIP, and other allied terror groups fled to Pakistan’s tribal agencies after the US invasion of Afghanistan following Al Qaeda’s attack on the US on September 11, 2001.
Before the US invasion of Afghanistan, Turkistani was responsible for administering the TIP’s primary training camp in the Tora Bora Mountains in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. Osama bin Laden sponsored the TIP camp, which provided light-weapons training to recruits. Several jihadi prisoners held and interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility identified Turkistani as the camp’s chief instructor. (See the Long War Journal report “The Uighurs, in their own words.”)
After the collapse of the Taliban’s first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in late 2001, Turkistani helped reestablish the TIP’s camps in Pakistan’s tribal agencies. In 2005, he was given a seat on Al Qaeda’s top advisory council, according to the US Treasury Department, which listed him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2009. Two US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal that Turkistani remains on Al Qaeda’s governing council. In its designation, Treasury stated that Turkistani is involved with fundraising, recruiting, propaganda efforts, and the planning and execution of terror attacks. The United Nations Security Council also added Turkistani to its Al Qaeda sanctions list.
Turkistani and the TIP aided the Taliban in its takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. In May 2022, he and other TIP leaders and fighters celebrated the Taliban’s victory in northern Afghanistan during the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Turkistani’s activities are not confined to Central Asia. He currently directs the group’s fighters inside Syria, the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team reported earlier this year. It is unlikely that this role will change despite the TIP being subsumed into the new Syrian military.
