During the course of the war in Syria, one of the main contingents of forces fighting on the side of the Assad regime was the so-called 'Forces of the Friends' (Arabic: Quwat al-Asdiqa'): that is, formations of Syrian fighters that were supported and overseen by personnel from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and/or Hezbollah. Collectively, these formations constituted the 'Local Defence Forces' network, a project more broadly coordinated with the Syrian military. With the collapse of the Assad regime, these formations have similarly collapsed and do not constitute 'stay-behind' sabotage networks for the Iranians and Hezbollah to undermine the new government.
As observers and historians come to document the history of the conflict, it will be important to try to track down and interview those who worked in the 'Forces of the Friends' in order to learn about their personal experiences in these networks, not only because of a general dearth of information on these groups, but also because the most accessible, publicly available information tends to come from partisan, pro-opposition sources that frequently spoke of these networks as 'Iranian militias'. Of course, trying to track down and interview veterans has its own limitations and obstacles: people may be unwilling to speak candidly or at all out of fear of reprisal from the new government, and interviewees may try to recast their motivations in light of the fact they were on the losing side. But these problems do not mean we should not try.
The following interview was conducted on 30 December 2024 with a friend who was working with the 'Forces of the Friends' from the days prior to the collapse of Assad's regime. He is a Sunni with family origins in al-Zabadani (a town that was besieged by the Assad regime and Hezbollah). Some of the topics discussed include:
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