Mountain Hawks Brigade

The Mountain Hawks Brigade, formerly the Hawks of Mount Zawiya Brigade (لواء صقور جبل الزاويه), is a Saudi-sponsored Free Syrian Army rebel group operating in northwestern Syria. The group took its name from the Zawiya Mountain in the Idlib Governorate.

History
In September 2012, Hassan Haj Ali, a former Syrian Army captain who defected in 2011, formed the Hawks of Mount Zawiya Brigade as a subunit of the Ahfad al-Rasul Brigades.

In early 2014 the Hawks of Mount Zawiya Brigade joined the Syria Revolutionaries Front but later left the SRF due to internal disputes. It was one of the founding members of the 5th Corps but it also became defunct. Since 2014 the group is supplied with BGM-71 TOW missiles from the CIA through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, and is one of the original and most prolific users of the missiles in Syria.

At the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Syria in October 2015, the headquarters of the Mountain Hawks Brigade was hit by 20 air-to-surface missiles from the Russian Air Force. 2 months later, The Mountain Hawks Brigade clashed with the newly founded Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern Aleppo Governorate, capturing a village from the Army of Revolutionaries. Mountain Hawks Brigade fighters then took down and burned the flags of the SDF and the Army of Revolutionaries while chanting "Allahu Akbar". The group also participated along with other Fatah Halab factions in the shelling of the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood in Aleppo.

During the Northern Aleppo offensive (February 2016), a unit of the Mountain Hawks Brigade consisting of 50 fighters stationed in the town of Deir Jamal in northern Aleppo defected to the Army of Revolutionaries. The unit's commander was captured by another rebel group soon after his defection.

In September 2016, the Mountain Hawks Brigade, along with the Northern Division and the 13th Division, formed the Free Idlib Army, In response to the establishment of the Free Idlib Army, a group of Mountain Hawks Brigade fighters defected to join Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in early October.

On 25 January 2017, the groups of fighters which left the Mountain Hawks Brigade in September 2016 for the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, returned, along with their leader, Lt. Col. Nasha'at Haj Ahmad.