Timour Azhari

On the foreign fighters — Uyghurs, Jordanians, a Turkish citizen, an Egyptian and an Albanian — appointed to Syria’s armed forces: Chinese Uyghur militant Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, also known as Zahid and the commander of the separatist Turkistan Islamic Party's (TIP) forces in Syria, was appointed a brigadier-general, a TIP statement said and the Syrian military source confirmed. Two other Uyghur fighters, Mawlan Tarsoun Abdussamad and Abdulsalam Yasin Ahmad, were given the rank of colonel, said the TIP statement published on its website, congratulating them and the Uyghur community on the appointments. All the names appear in Sunday's Defence Ministry announcement, though the nationalities are not included. The TIP is thought to have hundreds of fighters in Syria and aims to establish an Islamic State in parts of China and central Asia, where there is a large Uyghur Muslim population. China labels the TIP a terrorist organisation responsible for plots to attack overseas Chinese targets. Beijing has said TIP "gravely threatens" China's interests and security overseas and that combating the group was China's "core concern" in its counter-terrorism effort. Turkish citizen Omar Mohammed Jaftashi and Jordanian citizen Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Khatib were also made brigadier-generals, the Syrian military source and the HTS source said. Abdul Jashari, an ethnically Albanian fighter also known as Abu Qatada al-Albani, was appointed colonel, the military source said. Jashari head the Albanian jihadist group Xhemati Alban and was designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury in 2016. Egyptian Alaa Mohammed Abdel-Baqi was also given a military rank, the source said. Egypt's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.