Liwa Fatemiyoun was established in 1980 and has supported Assad against the Syrian revolution since 2013 (Iranian press)

The "Fatemiyoun Brigade" was established in 1980 under the name "Abu Dharr Brigade", then its name changed to "Fatemiyoun" when it participated alongside the Syrian regime in suppressing the revolution in 2013. It is divided into 3 sections, and the number of its fighters is estimated at 14,000.

Its founder, Ali Reda Tavassoli, was killed in a battle in Syria in 2015, and Abu Baqir al-Saadi assumed the task of managing the brigade’s operations alongside 6 other commanders.

Their headquarters is located less than a kilometer from Damascus International Airport.

The genesis of the brigade

The roots of the Fatemiyoun Brigade go back to the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, when it appeared under the name “Abu Dharr Brigade,” but it emerged under the new name for the first time when it participated in the fighting alongside the Syrian regime in 2013. The brigade consists mainly of the second generation of refugees. The Afghans, who belong to the Shiite Hazara ethnicity, took refuge in Iran after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

The nucleus of the "Fatemiyoun Brigade" consists of fighters from the Shiite militia "Army of Muhammad" (Sepah Muhammad), which was active in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and then left Afghan territory for Iran, as well as the "Abu Dharr Brigade", an Afghan Shiite militia that fought in the Iranian War. The brigade lost thousands of its fighters during this war, which lasted 8 years.

The core of the Fatemiyoun Brigade consists of Afghan Shiite fighters (French)

Brigade sections

Some researchers divide Afghan Shiite fighters in Syria into 3 categories:

  • The first section: Refugees from the Shiite Hazara ethnicity who took refuge in Syria and lived near the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood in Damascus during the Afghan war. Their number may reach 2,000 people.

  • The second section: Those who were recruited in Iran, who are the vast majority.

  • The third section: They came from inside Afghanistan, most of them from the states of Bamyan, Balkh, Sarpul, Daykandi, and Herat. Ali Saleh is considered one of the first dead to participate alongside the Syrian regime.

Number of fighters

The number of the brigade’s fighters is estimated at 14,000 fighters, but at the height of the Syrian conflict, the strength of the “Fatimiyyin” force was estimated at about 20,000 fighters. Estimates indicate that more than 5,000 fighters from the brigade were either killed or went missing during the fighting in Syria since 2013, in addition to About 4,000 fighters were injured.

The brigade's fighters are divided into battalions, each battalion's number is estimated at 150 to 200 fighters, distributed across different regions in Syria.

Their ages range from their twenties to thirties.

The Fatemiyoun Brigade fighters are the largest force of non-Arab foreign fighters supporting Iran in the Middle East.

Security analysts say that the main goal behind Afghan refugees in Iran joining the brigade is to improve their financial and social situation, because most of them have suffered from marginalization and economic and social deprivation for 4 decades, and everyone who joins the “Fatemiyoun Brigade” is able to obtain social status and financial and legal rewards.

Founder and most prominent member

Ali Reza Tavassoli is considered the most prominent figure of the brigade, and he is its first founder. He is known as “Abu Hamid”. He is an Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran since the 1980s. He was born on September 23, 1962 in the city of Behsud in central Afghanistan. He lost his father when he was 7 years old. From his age, and two years later he also lost his mother.

He left Afghanistan in 1984 for Iran and studied there, and worked in construction while studying.

In 1987, he participated in the so-called Holy Defense War in the Kurdistan region.

After the end of the Iran-Iraq war, he returned to Afghanistan and joined the forces of Abdul Ali Mazari, one of the leaders of the Shiite parties in Afghanistan.

With the emergence of the Taliban movement in 1995, he returned to Afghanistan again and took up arms against the movement’s militants, but he was defeated and returned for the third time to Iran.

Fatemiyoun Brigade fighters are the largest force of non-Arab foreign fighters supporting Iran in the Middle East (Iranian press)

In 2011, with the beginning of the Syrian revolution, he was one of the first to come to Syria with 25 of his fighters, and he founded the “Fatemiyoun Brigade,” whose number reached 14,000 fighters. The leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the late Major General Qassem Soleimani, once said about him, “If we look at... "From any angle, the courage of the Fatimids, it must be said that their efforts left a very precious and valuable impact."

Ali Reda was killed on February 28, 2015 in the city of Daraa, southern Syria.

A group of the brigade's leaders were also killed in Syria, the most prominent of whom were: Hakim and Hussein Fadaei, Reza Ghafari, Sayed Ibrahim, Muhammad Hosseini, and the head of intelligence in the brigade, Anwar al-Yawri.

After the killing of 3 of the brigade’s leaders in Syria, the Iranians changed its leadership structure, and it no longer had a single leader. Rather, each battalion had a leader, and these battalions were distributed among different areas in Syria.

After the killing of Ali Reza Tavassoli and the continued targeting of the Fatemiyoun leadership, the Iranian government decided to recruit people with ambiguous identities, and since many Afghans are born in Iran, it cannot be certain that the people chosen to lead the Fatemiyoun are Afghans, even though Iran Confirm it.

Iran is trying to appoint non-prominent leaders in the brigade for fear of the possibility of losing control over it, and when Tavassoli was killed, morale declined among his soldiers, and Iran sought to quickly appoint more leaders, so that they would be less known, and could be easily eliminated and controlled, to prevent dissent within. Brigade ranks.

Currently, Abdul Baqir Alawi coordinates the brigade’s operations throughout the region, and is assisted by 6 additional commanders in the various areas of operations.

The Fatemiyoun forces do not settle in one place in Syria, but rather they are a mobile force, and their bases are also moved frequently, and their main headquarters is located less than a kilometer from Damascus International Airport.

American classification

In 2019, the US Treasury Department classified the Fatemiyoun Brigade in Syria as a “terrorist organization” because it provides material support to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the time of the designation that the Iranian regime “exploits refugee communities in Iran, deprives them of access to basic services, such as education, and uses them as human shields in the Syrian conflict.”

Source: Al Jazeera + websites