National Republican Greek League
During the Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1944), large parts of the Muslim Cham community collaborated with the Italian and German forces as Axis forces manipulated the Cham issue to encourage beneficial resistance to Greek rule in the region. In the early 1940s, 1,800 Cham conscripts were disarmed by Greek forces and set to perform hard labor on infrastructure improvements, and all Albanian males who had not yet been conscripted were deported to internment camps or placed in exile on Greek islands. At the end of World War II, Cham Albanians were systematically cleansed from the region by the guerilla forces of the right-wing National Republican Greek League (EDES) led by Napoleon Zervas. Some Muslim Chams who formed the Chameria Battalion provided military support to the left-wing resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army. After Cham Albanians declined to fight against the left-wing resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army, Zervas ordered a mass assault on Cham villages, which mainly consisted of EDES forces and local Greek peasantry eager to exact their revenge on the richer minority of Cham Albanians in the region.