The Syrian Arab Army was estimated to consist of 350.000 soldiers before the outbreak of Syrian revolution. Since then, members had defected from the ranks of the Syrian Army, due to the large deviation of its mission of defending the Syrian people and not killing them.
Proportion of the dissenting soldiers exceeded 55%, almost 190,000 defectors, including soldiers and high rank officers. Most of them are from the Sunni sect, who suffered the most from the ongoing murder, detention and destruction, along with a few from the other sects.
The Syrian regime offset those defections by calling Iranian militias such as the Brigade of Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, Iraqi militias, and militia of Hezbollah (it should be mentioned that its military wing was recently added to the terrorist list). In addition to recruitments of hundreds of Syrians, most of them belong to the Alwite sect where they formed the so-called National Defense Army, who are paid monthly salaries that exceed the rate paid for regular soldiers, allowing them to plunder and steal property and houses from neighborhoods that they raid, are permitted to commit rape, murder, torture without any deterrent or punishment. Even more, al-Assad (the father) has legislated these crimes constitutionally in order to protect the criminals. On January 15, 1969, Legislative Decree 14 was issued establishing the General Intelligence Administration; Article 16 of the decree states, “No legal action may be taken against any employee of the department for crimes committed while carrying out their designated duties…. except by an order issued by the director.” To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, the General Intelligence director has never issued such an order.
On September 2008, Bashar al- Assad (the son) issued Legislative decree No.69 which extended this immunity to members of other security forces, by requiring a decree from the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces to prosecute any member of the internal security forces, Political Security, and customs police.
On the other hand defectors and a huge number of armed rebels formed the Free Syrian Army, comprised of more than 200,000 fighters, most of them are civilian rebels who took weapons and trained themselves to use them. Free Syrian Army suffers from major problems such as disintegrating, dispersions, and lack of centralized leadership unlike the Syrian Army.
There are a number of battalions who chose to not fight under the banner of Free Syrian Army, the most prominent are:
– Sham Islamic Freedom Movement, where the number of fighters exceed 20,000 (95% of them are Syrian).
– Nusra front; the number of fighters exceed 50,000, after the defection of a number of foreign fighters and joining The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, most of the fighters in Nusra are Syrian (exceed 80%).
– The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, exceed 4,000 fighters. Its popularity sharply deteriorated within the past seven months because it committed a large number of violations against Syrian people. Their final goals are radically different from the goals of the Syrian people’s revolution in pluralism and democracy, which led to tens of defections. Considering it infiltrated by Iranian and Syrian intelligence and implementing their agenda, foreign fighters forms overwhelming majority in The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (exceed 90%).
According to Syrian Network for Human Rights documentations, Syrian Free Army lost at least 14,574 fighters in combats with government forces since the beginning of the revolution to this date.
SNHR doesn’t document causalities of Shabiha militia, security forces and Syrian Regime’s Army because of the inability to access and communicate with their parents and relatives under the prosecution , ban and restrictions of SNHR’s members.