The following is an interview conducted on 18 July 2022 with an internally displaced person (IDP) who currently resides in the village of al-Fu'a in Idlib province, which previously had a Shi'i population that was evacuated from the village in July 2018 as part of negotiated agreements that included the involvement of Iran, Hezbollah and the insurgents. Since that time, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and other factions have seized property in the area, and IDPs from other regions of Syria have settled in the properties.

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Hardly a day goes by in Syria without some incident of assassination. For many of these killings, motives can be inferred with high or considerable confidence, such as when the Islamic State claims assassinations of local officials working with the Syrian Democratic Forces, or when personnel of Syrian government forces are targeted in the southern Syrian province of Deraa. Many other incidents however are obscure in their circumstances and attempts to deduce motives will likely remain somewhat speculative. Perhaps the latest example to add to the latter category is the case of Hikmat Haddad of the village of Kukku in the Jabal al-Summaq region of northern Idlib province. He was killed earlier today (1 August).

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There has been some controversy over the nature of the Islamic State's insurgency in the 'Badiya' region of Syria (i.e. a region centred on the Homs desert area, whose most well-known urban centre is Palmyra, as well as surrounding areas in western Deir az-Zor, southern Raqqa and eastern Hama that are sparsely populated). The Islamic State in general has had very little to say about its activities in the region, only occasionally issuing official claims of operations.

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One of the consequences of the war in Syria has been the expansion of the influence of Iran, Hezbollah and the 'resistance axis' in general inside the country. This does not mean, as some suppose, that these actors control the decision-making of the Syrian government, or that they have engineered a massive demographic shift inside of Syria.

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I have documented the National Ideological Resistance- a movement that originated in Tartous province and uses 'Syrian Hezbollah'- style imagery- on multiple occasions. Perhaps the main misconception about the group has been the idea that it constitutes a separate 'militia' inside Syria. In fact, a more accurate picture would suggest that it is a political/activist movement whose members have fought in the ranks of a variety of military formations, including the Republican Guard and the Local Defence Forces (the latter supported by the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah).

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