Members of the Tehran-backed Afghan Shia militia known as the Fatemiyoun division have resurfaced in Iran after largely disappearing from public view following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in 2024. FRANCE 24 used "martyrdom” announcements and the geolocation of videos shared on social media to trace their presence.
During Syria’s civil war, Iran organised and deployed foreign fighters to support then-president Bashar al-Assad’s government against armed opposition groups. These included Shia militias from Afghanistan and Pakistan, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
One of the largest Iran-backed foreign fighting forces in Syria was the Afghan Shia militia known as the Fatemiyoun division.
The group was designated as a terrorist entity by Canada in 2019 and placed under US counterterrorism sanctions the same year for supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force (IRGC-QF).
The Fatemiyoun division is estimated to have between 8,000 and 50,000 fighters in Syria. Its members were recruited mainly from Afghan Shia communities, and many of them were from migrant and refugee communities in Iran.
After 11 years of fighting in Syria, when around 2,000 militia members were killed, everything changed abruptly for the Fatemiyoun in December 2024. Assad fled to Russia as a rebel coalition led by Ahmad al-Sharaa toppled his government, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) withdrew its forces from Syria.
