Arab Sa'id Revisited (Again)

The village of Arab Sa’id in the al-Roj Plain was notable for being a de facto stronghold of the al-Qa’ida-loyalist group Hurras al-Din prior to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s crackdown in summer 2020. How is the situation in general two years on? Below is a brief interview I recently conducted with the same local source whom I have interviewed before as he wished to provide an update on the situation. According to him (note that he himself is a sympathiser with Hurras al-Din, so this should be borne in mind), Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s rule remains unpopular. There was also some information on local figure Abu Omar Manhaj’s activity shared as part of our discussion, but it is omitted here for security reasons. Any parenthetical insertions in square brackets are my own.