Baghdad, Iraq – Syrian and Iraqi officials have held talks in recent weeks over the fate of Iraqi fighters detained in Syrian prisons, a Syrian security source told +963 on Monday.
The detainees, the source said, were captured during the battle that toppled Bashar al-Assad late last year. Most Iraqi fighters present in Syria reportedly withdrew back to Iraq during and after the regime’s fall.
On March 20, another Syrian official told +963 that the interim government in Damascus plans to revoke the citizenship of foreign fighters who fought alongside Assad’s army before its collapse in December. The move would target individuals from multiple nationalities, including Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.
Syrian civil registry offices are reportedly working to unify databases to streamline the process of revoking nationality from these combatants. According to the source, Lebanese fighters rank first in numbers among those naturalized under the former regime, followed by Iraqis and Iran-backed foreign recruits.
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No official statistics exist on the exact number of foreigners naturalized under the rule of the deposed regime, as Syrian authorities kept the data and their deployment locations highly secret.
Research by the Jusoor For Studies indicates that among the most prominent pro-regime factions was the Fatimiyoun Brigade, composed largely of Afghan fighters, estimated at around 3,000 members, followed by the Zainabiyoun Brigade of Pakistani fighters, estimated at 1,000 members.
The Iraqi Hezbollah faction counted roughly 7,000 fighters, while Saraya Tala’i al-Khurasani had around 5,000 members, most of them Iraqis. Other Iraqi-led groups included Harakat al-Nujaba, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Liwa al-Imam Hussein, Liwa Dhu al-Fiqar, Liwa Saada, Forces of Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, and Faylaq al-Waad al-Sadiq, though no accurate figures are available for their size.
