Having served with the Free Syrian Army during the conflict's early stages, he reportedly joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2013, possibly as a spy for the Turkish intelligence.

[3] According to Muhammad al-Binshi, he initially joined the Abu Bakr Sadiq Brigades, a "moderate" rebel group, in the early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war.

[11] In summer 2013, Sayf Balud fought in a rebel group alongside ISIL against Kurdish paramilitary factions such as the People's Protection Units (YPG) in the northern Aleppo countryside.

[2] Based on information gathered by Heras, researcher Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi argued that Sayf Balud's escape to Turkey might have resulted from ISIL discovering that he was working for Turkish intelligence.

In contrast, his later unit – the Hamza Division – would claim that Sayf Balud had never served ISIL and had been actually imprisoned by the organization in Aleppo's al-Uyun hospital in the time from 2013 to 2014, before being rescued by other rebel factions.

[11][2] Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi speculated that Sayf Balud's rapid rise within the Hazzm Movement despite previous interactions with ISIL could have been due to connections with the Turkish intelligence.

[1] In May 2018, his brother Hamed Balud (alias "Yaba") was involved in a scandal as he and other Hamza Division fighters attacked three hospitals in and around al-Bab, possibly to terrorize local supporters of ISIL and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

[15] The affair surrounding his brother caused considerable local opposition against the Hamza Division and Sayf Balud, as he had personally appointed Hamad to run al-Bab's administration.

[17] Sayf led his unit during the Northwestern Syria offensive (April–August 2019), publicly declaring that rebel rocket attacks on Nubl and al-Zahraa were meant as retribution for government bombardments of Idlib and Hama.

[9] At the time, The Daily Beast published an article which portrayed Sayf Balud as an "ISIS Warlord" who had fought for the Jihadist movement for several years before defecting to Turkey.