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

... within the country, a conflict for which they were wholly unprepared. In particular, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was dominated exclusively by heavy armoured and mechanized infantry... ... 15th Special Forces Divisions, thus providing armoured support to them . Lebanese Hezbollah detachments were subsequently used as an infantry component of the 4th Mechanized... ... unlikely that the SAA numbers more than about 70,000 – 80,000 troops at present. Shabiha and the National Defence Forces The regime has not been able to restore full...