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TheEagles of the Whirlwind (Arabic:نسور الزوبعة,Nusour al Zawba'a) is the armed wing of theSyrian Social Nationalist Party. Around 6,000 to 8,000 men strong,[2] they participated in many battles and operations throughout theSyrian Civil War fighting alongside theSyrian government and its allies.
After the civil war in Syria turned into a full-scale war, the Eagles began taking recruits and their fighters were primarily deployed in the governorates ofHoms andDamascus and were said to be the most formidable military force other than theSyrian Army inSuwayda.[16] Their most notable military operations is their participation in the battlesof Sadad,Maaloula, andal-Qaryatayn, among others.[17]
As part of campaigns launched by theBa'ath party to strengthen its role in Syrian society since 2019,[18] Syrian wing of SSNP (Amana) financed by businessmanRami Makhlouf was banned.[19] This was part of the wider clampdown on business assets and private militias of Rami Makhlouf ordered byBashar al-Assad.[20] In November 2019, Ba'athist authorities initiated crackdown on armed SSNP militias across the country, and dismantled Eagles of Whirlwind. EOW fighters were subsequently assimilated into Russian-backed Fifth Corps after surrendering their artillery.[21][22][19]
InLebanon, the Eagles, composed ofChristians andMuslims, have been active since theLebanese Civil War by integrating theLebanese National Resistance Front with the support of the Syrian Armed Forces, who fought the Lebanese Forces and allied Maronite militias of Israel. They recently participated in the 2023–2024 border clashes against the Israeli army alongside Hezbollah, with which they have a history of armed cooperation since the 1990s against theIsraeli army.
The eagles were the armed wing of theSSNP and thus shared the same ideologies and goals. The SSNP's core ideology isSyrian nationalism and the belief in the concept of a 'Greater Syria' or 'Natural Syria' which extends from theTaurus range north of Syria to theSuez Canal in Egypt, thus encompassing the modern states ofSyria,Lebanon,Iraq,Kuwait,Jordan,Palestine,Israel and parts ofEgypt,Turkey andIran. Despite political differences with the rulingBa'ath party, SSNP stood by the Assad government throughout the course of theSyrian Civil War until Assad fled the country.
The Eagles are anti-Zionist because, following the ideology of Pan-Syrianism, they consider Palestine to be part of natural Greater Syria.
Allied with theSyrian Ba'ath Party despite ideological differences, the SSNP and its armed wing supported the Syrian Ba'athist government during theLebanese Civil War, theSyrian occupation of Lebanon and then theSyrian civil war.
The Eagles were formed in Lebanon in 1975, at the start of theLebanese Civil War. They specialize in guerrilla actions and harassment of enemy troops. They formed an allied squad and then member of theLebanese National Movement and then its successor, theLebanese National Resistance Front, which brings together opponents of the Lebanese Front. At the same time, the divided SSNP reunified under a common leadership based in Beirut in 1978. The SSNP-L found its natural allies in the Palestinian guerrillas, mainlyFatah and thePFLP, as well as in its former bitter enemies: left-wingArab nationalist movements, theSyrian Ba'ath Party and the communists.
The Eagles developed during the 1980s where they attacked and harassed both theLebanese Forces and theIsraeli Army, with some members using suicide bombings to destroy groups of enemy factions.
After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent renewal of left-wing forces, a number of left-wing organizations banded together to participate in resistance to the Israeli occupation. Alongside theLebanese Communist Party, theOrganization of Communist Action in Lebanon, and some small left-wing groups, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party played a leading role in this regard. One of the most prominent sparks of resistance was the assassination of two Israeli soldiers at the Wimpy Café in the middle of Hamra Street, west Beirut, by party member Khaled Alwan. The party continues to celebrate this date. The FBI blamed them for the 1982assassination of Bachir Gemayel, then Lebanese president-elect, who was supported by the Israeli invaders besieging Beirut.[23]
In 1983, the SSNP joined the Lebanese National Salvation Front alongside theMarada Brigade, a Christian militia allied with Damascus. The same year, the party joined theLebanese National Resistance Front, created to oppose the failure of the 17 May agreement with Israel, signed byBachir Gemayel's brother,Amine Gemayel.[24] Some party members were willing to sacrifice their lives by participating in martyrdom operations on Israel, the first in 1985. One of the party's members,Sanaa Mehaidli, a sixteen-year-old member of the Eagles who committed a martyrdom operation on an Israeli checkpoint in Lebanon, was considered "a predecessor of all the martyrs of the Palestinian cause."[24]
Within the Lebanese National Resistance Front, the Eagles participated alongside Hezbollah in the war on the Israeli Army and its collaborators in theSouth Lebanon Army, thus explaining why the Eagles did not surrender their weaponry after the end of the Lebanese civil war, as they participated in thewar to eliminate Israeli invaders between 1991 and 2000.
In 2006, the Eagles participated, in collaboration with Hezbollah, in the2006 Lebanon–Israel War.
In 2011, against the backdrop of theArab Spring, a rebellion broke out in Syria, leading to theSyrian civil war. The Syrian branch of the Eagles was formed in 2012 and supports loyalist forces but is autonomous from theSyrian armed forces.[25] The Syrian Eagles also fought alongside Hezbollah and the Syrian Armed Forces against various rebel and jihadist groups, notably during thebattle of Maaloula where the town, inhabited by Christians (like most of the Eagles including a large number of them are Christians), had fallen into the hands of fundamentalist troops of theal-Nusra Front.[26] Subsequently, the Eagles, in cooperation withHezbollah, participated in theBattle of Zabadani supported by theIranian Revolutionary Guards.[27] They also took part in the Battle of Aleppo, allied to the pro-Assad Palestinian units of theLiwa al-Quds,[28]Hezbollah, various Shia militias of Iraq and theBa'ath Brigades which ended by a decisive victory for theSyrian Arab Republic againstDaesh and the rebels of theFree Syrian Army.[28]
The groupfought against the Islamic State alongside the Druze militiasMen of Dignity andAl-Jabal Brigade in July 2018.[14]
In 2019, the Syrian Ba'athist government decided to integrate the Eagles into theSyrian Arab Army.[18]
in 2025, a Druze fighter (Nashwan al Shaer, a native of Suwayda city) was killed, Shaer was a member of the Eagles of the Whirlwind.[29]
The Lebanese branch of the Eagles are participating in theongoing war on the Lebanese border alongsideHezbollah on the invadingIsraeli forces, following theGaza–Israel war.
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