[US News & WR] In the four years since the start of the civil war in Syria, Shiite groups have been fighting militant Salafists alongside the Syrian army. The most prominent of these groups is the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, whose presence has had a direct impact on developments on the ground in Syria. Recently, however, another Shiite group in Syria has caught the media's attention. Quwat al-Ridha has stepped into the limelight because unlike other Shiite militias, whose ranks are made up of people coming in from abroad, members of this group belong to Syria's small Shiite community.
According to a report by Orient News, which covers Syria-related news from the United Arab Emirates, Iran is behind the creation of this new Shiite militia. However, it has not been able to provide more details regarding this new brigade. No information has been provided by Persian-language websites either.
However, in an interview with Al-Monitor, Hussein al-Diyab -- who hails from a Shiite district of Homs -- offered some details on Quwat al-Ridha.
Diyab says Hezbollah is responsible for organizing, training and equipping the group and that Quwat al-Ridha can be considered the core of what he calls "Hezbollah in Syria."
Diyab, who long ago moved to Iran to study at the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, says both of his brothers -- one holding a master's degree in mathematics and the other with a bachelor's degree in Arabic literature -- are members of Quwat al-Ridha. He told Al-Monitor, "Our family lived in the city of Homs, but when the crisis started, considering the opposition's violent treatment of Shiites, our family decided to return to our ancestral village of Thabetiya. There are a lot of Shiite villages in the western part of Homs province, and our family thought that it would be safer there."