‘They were ordered to take their backpacks and leave’

The semi -transmitted foods on two floors, the neglected military uniforms and the abandoned weapons – these are the remnants of a sudden retreat from this base that belonged to Iran and its affiliated groups in Syria.

The scene tells a panic story. The forces stationed here escaped with a little warning, leaving behind a decade of time collapsing in only weeks.

Iran was Syrian President Bashar al -Assad the most important for more than 10 years. She deployed military advisers, ranked foreign militias, and invested extensively in the Syria war.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) built deep networks of underground rules, providing weapons and training for thousands of fighters. For Iran, this was also part of the “security belt” against Israel.

We are near the city of Khan Shikoon in Idlib County. Before the Assad regime dropped on December 8, it was one of the main strategic sites of IRGC and its allied groups.

From the main road, the entrance is barely visible, hidden behind piles of sand and rocks. The surveillance tower overlooks the top of a hill, still coated with the colors of the Iranian flag, on the base.

The notebook of the receipts confirms the name of al -Qaeda: the position of the martyr Zuhdi – who was named after the name of Muhammad Reda Zahdi, the IRGC leader who was assassinated in an alleged Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1, 2024.

The recently requested supplies – we found chocolate receipts, rice and cooking oil – indicated that daily life continued here until the last moments. But now there are new-employed-two-fighters of armed fighters from Ouigor from Haya Tarr al-Sham (HTS), the Islamic Armed Group whose leader Ahmed Al-Sharra has become the new interim president of Syria.

The Uighurs suddenly arrived in a military car, and asked for our dependence on the media.

“The Iranians were here. They all fled,” says one of them, speaking in his mother tongue, the Turkish dialect. “All you see here is one of them. Even these onions and the remaining foods.”

Fresh boxes full of onion in the courtyard have now been growing.

The base is a maze of deeply engraved tunnels in white rock hills. There is a two -scale family in some rooms without windows. The ceiling of one of the corridors is filled with fabric in the colors of the Iranian flag, and there are a few Persian books on a rock shelf.

They left behind documents containing sensitive information. All of them in Persian, they have details of the personal information of the fighters, the symbols of military personnel, the headlines of the house, the names of husbands and the numbers of mobile phones in Iran. Among the names, it is clear that many fighters at this base were from the Afghan brigade that Iran formed to fight in Syria.

Sources associated with Iran -backed Persian groups have been told that the main homes accompany the Afghan forces accompanied by Iranian “military advisers” and their Iranian leaders.

Tehran’s main justification for its military involvement in Syria was the “fighting jihadist groups” and protecting the “Shiite holy shrines” against Sunni militants.

Plural groups were created by Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqis fighters.

However, when the last minute came, Iran was not ready. The decline orders reached some rules at the last minute. “The developments have occurred very quickly,” a senior member of an Iraqi paramilitary backed by Iran told me. “It was just taking back and leaving.”

Multiple sources near the IRGC BBC have told that most of the forces had to flee to Iraq, and some ordered to go to Lebanon or Russian bases to devote them from Syria.

HTS fighter, Muhammad Al -Habham, witnessed the group from Idlib to Aleppo and the capital of Syria, Damascus.

He says they believe that their operations would take “about a year” and better, “they were” picked up Aleppo within three to six months. “But to be surprised, they entered Aleppo within days.

The rapid fall of the regime led to a series of events after Hamas attack on October 7 on Israel.

This attack led to the escalation of Israeli air strikes against IRGC and Iran-backed groups in Syria and a war against another major Iranian ally-the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which killed its leader in an air strike.

The 35 -year -old fighter rabbi says that the “psychological breakdown” of Iran and Hezbollah was essential in their fall.

But the most important blow came from the inside: There was a dispute between Assad and his allies associated with Iran, he says.

“There was a complete collapse of military confidence and cooperation between them. IRGC groups blamed Assad from treason and believed to give up their positions to Israel.”

While we pass through Khan Shakhoun, we encountered a street plated in the colors of the Iranian flag. It leads to a school building that was used as an Iranian headquarters.

On the wall at the entrance to the toilets, you read slogans: “down with Israel” and “bottom with the United States.”

It was clear that this headquarters were evacuated in a short notice. We found the classified documents as “very sensitive”.

Abdullah, 65, and his family are among the very few locals who lived and lived here alongside the IRGC groups. He says this life was difficult.

His house is located just a few meters from the headquarters and between them, and there are deep trenches with a thorny wire.

He says, “The movement was banned at night.”

His neighbor’s house turned into a military position. He recalls, “They sat there with their rifles, referring to the road, and they all treat us as suspects.”

He says that most of the fighters did not even speak Arabic. “They were Afghan, Iranians, Hezbollah. But we all mentioned them as Iranians because Iran was controlling them.”

Abdullah’s wife says she is happy that “Iranian militias” have left, but she still remembers the “stressful” moment before her withdrawal. I thought they would be besieged in Crossfire because Iran -backed groups were fortifying their positions and preparing to fight, but then “they disappeared within a few hours.”

“This profession was the Iranian occupation,” says Abd, who just returned here with his family after 10 years. His house was also a military base.

I noticed this anger towards Iran and a more soft situation towards Russia in many talks with the Syrians.

I asked the rabbi, the fighter hts, why was this.

“The Russians were dropping bombs from the sky. Otherwise, they were in their bases while the Iranians and their militias were interacting. People were feeling their existence, and many were not happy with it,” he explained.

This feeling is reflected in the policy of new rulers in Syria towards Iran.

The new authorities have developed a ban on Iranian citizens, along with the Israelis, and entered Syria. But there is no such ban against the Russians.

The Iranian embassy, ​​which was stormed by angry demonstrators after the fall of the regime, is still closed.

Iranian officials’ reaction to developments in Syria was contradictory.

While the Supreme Leader Ali Khounai called on “Syrian Youth” to “resist” those who “brought instability” to Syria, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took a more balanced view.

She says the country “supports any government supported by the Syrian people.”

In one of his first interviews, the new leader of Syria described his victory over Assad as the “end of the Iranian project.” But he did not rule out a “balanced” relationship with Tehran.

At the present time, though, Iran is not welcome in Syria. After years of expanding its military presence, everything is built by Tehran now in a state of ruin, both in the battlefield, and it seems that it is in the eyes of a large part of the Syrian fans.

Returning to the deserted base, Iranian military expansion was still ongoing even in recent days. Next to the camp was more tunnels under construction, and it appears that the beginnings of the field hospital. Cement on the walls was still wet and fresh paint.

But I now left behind evidence of a short fighting – some bullets and blood -covered military uniforms.