The Guardians of the Dawn (Arabic: حراس الفجر, romanized: Ḥurrās al-Fajr) are a coalition of Christian pro-government militias which are involved in the Syrian Civil War and affiliated with the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Although the Guardians of the Dawn, whose official motto is "A homeland that we do not protect is one we do not deserve to live in", promote themselves as a Syrian nationalist force, their fighters are primarily motivated by a concept of holy war to defend the Christian areas of Syria from hostile rebels. The militiamen of Usud al-Cherubim, one of the coalition's constituent groups, even refer to themselves as "mujahideen of the cross".