Discrimination Against Syrians in the Resistance Axis: A Message to Hassan Nasrallah

One of the consequences of the war in Syria has been the expansion of the influence of Iran, Hezbollah and the ‘resistance axis’ in general inside the country. This does not mean, as some suppose, that these actors control the decision-making of the Syrian government, or that they have engineered a massive demographic shift inside of Syria.

Rather, the expansion of their influence is most apparent in their role in organising and supporting ‘auxiliary forces’ for the Syrian military, embodied in groups backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and/or Hezbollah and then integrated into the apparatus of the Local Defence Forces. As such, the wider ‘resistance axis’ now has many more Syrian members than prior to the war, and with the creation of Syrian groups aligned with this axis and recruitment of Syrians, the influence of Iran and Hezbollah et al. has increased in areas such as Aleppo.

But do the Syrian members of this axis receive the same rights and treatment as their non-Syrian counterparts?