The Descendants of Saladin Brigade (; Liwa Ahfad Saladin) was a Free Syrian Army group active in the northern Aleppo Governorate. The group was supported by Turkey and was initially funded and armed by the United States, mainly fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but also opposing the Syrian government and the Democratic Union Party's (PYD) affiliates such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The brigade was largely disbanded by the Turkish Army in 2017, following disagreements over the participation in a planned Turkish-led offensive against Afrin Canton, although a small faction within the group (known simply as Saladin Brigade) remained active and participated in the offensive since January 2018. Ideology Named after the Kurdish founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Saladin, the group is non-sectarian and officially advocates equal rights for all ethnicities in Syria, although it stated that it is not secular. According to the militia's former leader, Mahmoud Khallo, "Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Christians, Armenians and Alawites" are "all brothers under the roof of a single homeland". Though not categorically opposed to the federalization of Syria, the Descendants of Saladin Brigade believed that "federalism is not an effective system for Syria" due to most areas of the country being ethnically diverse. The Descendants of Saladin Brigade generally advocates civil democracy, though opposes the PYD on principle and rejected any talks with the party which it considers a proxy of the Syrian government. In an interview in December 2016, Khallo stated that his group's goal was to achieve equal rights for Kurds in Syria and to make Kurdish an official language in Syria. He stated that the group had good relations with Turkey and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraqi Kurdistan, and that their role model and leader was Massoud Barzani, head of the KDP and president of Iraqi Kurdistan at the time. Khallo opposed the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War due to the US-led Coalition's support for the SDF. Despite its strong opposition to the PYD, however, the unit was opposed to attacking the PYD-controlled Afrin Canton. The group's leader, Mahmoud Khallo, claimed that other Turkish-backed rebel groups have "hatred towards the Kurds", and feared potential massacres of Kurds if they launched an offensive against Afrin. After the Descendants of Saladin Brigade was mostly disbanded due to this stance, the remnant group that remained active and allied to Turkey continued to state that the