 Because of Umran's defection, Rifaat al-Assad (Assad's brother) succeeded Umran as commander of a secret military force tasked with protecting Military Committee loyalists.In its bid to seize power the Military Committee allied themselves with the regionalists, a group of cells in the Syrian Regional Branch that refused to disband in 1958 when ordered to do so.Although Aflaq considered these cells traitors, Assad called them the "true cells of the party"; this again highlighted differences between the Military Committee and the National Command headed by Aflaq.