The Syrian Armed Forces Seven Years into the Conflict: From a Regular Army to Volunteer Corps

... reverse the course of the war, “Shiite jihadists” started to emerge in the country during this period. They have since become an integral part of the regime’s armed forces. The most famous of these groups are Lebanon’s Hezbollah and numerous Iraqi groups, such as Liwa al-Zulfiqar and Liwa Asadullah al-Ghalib, which emerged as the followers of the Shiite jihad “pioneers” in Syria from the Iraqi forces – Liwa Abu Fadl al-Abbas and a conglomerate of Iraqi Shiite groups associated with ...