Iranian fighters in Syria bring money in cash, scars

HERAT, Afghanistan – In the last four years, thousands of young Afghan Shiites have been lured into the war in Syria by terrorists. Iran, as part of a well-funded system of recruitment, training and incentives that intone Afghan recruits to fight for a repressive Arab government.

Afghans are soldiers in somebody else 's war, driven by economic and religious difficulties to join a foreign fight. Some lost friends and relatives in combat or suffered serious injuries. According to researchers, up to 840 people were killed. Survivors tell of hard-fought battles near Aleppo or Damascus, and some believe that they help protect sacred Shia shrines in these areas.

Rare recent interviews with fighters and their families in Herat shed new light on despair. these men are fighting for Tehran in Syria, where various foreign forces backed by Iran have strengthened the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Even more than religion, these Afghan recruits seem mainly motivated by necessity. and again to bring home a few hundred dollars in military pay – even if they risk injury or death in front-line battles where few Iranian troops are sent. Although they can tell specific battles, they have limited knowledge of the broader causes and complex international roles of war.

Between 5,000 and 12,000 Afghans have participated in these units since their establishment in the Fatemiyoun Division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. , according to human rights and research groups. Most of them are refugees or workers living in Iran, but hundreds come from the Hazara and Shiite poor communities of this wind-swept city near the Iranian border, as well as other parts of the country. l & # 39; Afghanistan.

Iranian Foreign Shia Legion in Syria, which includes Lebanese, Iraqi and Pakistani fighters. Estimates of the numbers in each group vary considerably, but a survey of the funerals of Shiite fighters killed in Syria, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, shows that the bulk of the fighters killed were Hezbollah, a group of 39 Lebanese Shiite activists. Afghan Shiites had the second highest number of deaths.

The Trump administration said in December that she believed that 80% of the workforce supporting the Syrian regime was made up of "Iranian prosecutors," including foreign Shiite fighters. Israel has accused Iran of sending up to 80,000 combatants to Syria.

It is impossible to know the exact number of Afghan recruits in Syria, because many round trips between Iran and Afghanistan do not tell their families where they are. and hide their military service for fear of being sent to prison in Afghanistan for fighting on behalf of another country. Yet for some, especially those of the long-persecuted Hazara minority, it seems to be a secret badge of honor.

"No one forced us to fight, but it gives you some kind of pride," said Hussain, 26. a muscular Hazara man in Herat with scars on the face and hands of old shrapnel wounds. He has served in four deployments in Syria since 2014, earning $ 600 a month, and he returned from before two months ago. He said he had decided to enlist while he was working as a carpenter in Iran and saw a video of Islamic State fighters cutting off the victims' heads.

The Islamic State, a brutal Sunni militia that views Shiites as apostates, is reinforced Syria by its own range of Sunni foreign fighters, most of them from Western Europe and the former Soviet republics. As of December 2015, the number of Sunni fighters in Syria and Iraq was estimated at between 27,000 and 31,000, although this number has decreased as the extremist group has lost ground.

Hussain, who did not want to be completely identified arrest by Afghan security agents, gave a detailed account of his deployments. He described the training of Iranian instructors with weapons and Russian tanks, long nights of fighting in the desert against the Islamic State and other anti-Assad militias, emergency hospitalizations in Iran for various injuries and struggles with the Iranian military bureaucracy.

"You are caught in a situation, they give you money and food, they promise you more medical care, they give you documents to move freely in Iran," Hussain said. "They force you to feel obligated."

Human rights groups described the use of Tehran as Afghans and other foreign fighters as a tactic to save lives Iranian and tarnish the inner criticism of its involvement in a disordered and destructive foreign conflict. Some groups reported that 13-year-old boys were incited to fight and that recruits received short training and often suffered heavy losses. Afghans and other foreign fighters would have been decisive in the battle for Aleppo and others who turned the war in favor of Assad.

Tehran denies resorting to foreign fighters to avoid losses among its own youth; Iranian officials describe Afghans as religious volunteers. Experts say Iran's main stake in the war is to extend its influence over a large part of the Middle East, from its border with Afghanistan to Lebanon.

Afghan authorities have other reasons to oppose the secret collaboration of Afghans. Eastern War. This further complicated Afghanistan's close and tense relations with Iran, a more powerful neighbor and a trading partner with a long, common border, and he raised the specter of sectarian struggles at home. inside Afghanistan that it has so far largely avoided. The Afghan Shiite minorities have suffered discrimination and repression from their largest Sunni groups, mainly Pashtun groups. Often, Shiites have turned to Iran for shelter and jobs. Now, Iran is expelling non-resident Afghan workers by recruiting them as fighters, which suggests that Iran could use them to challenge Sunni dominance at home.

But the pace and intensity of Iranian recruitment slowed considerably as the Syrian regime consolidated its power. . At first, Hussain said the authorities would "take any who, young or old, Shia or Sunni, we would register in the morning and send us for training in the afternoon." Now, he said, the program is more selective. According to recruits, additional incentives to continue fighting include job offers or residency permits that are no longer available to most Afghans.

In addition to expressing horror and antagonism towards the Islamic State, the fighters interviewed in Herat "At first, many guys thought that they were fighting for something, but in the end, it was over, it was a matter of need, "Hussain said. , who now sells vegetables to Herat and swears that he will never return to Syria. Nevertheless, he said, it was rewarding to return home feeling a hero rather than a beggar and bring bundles of money to distressed parents who had worried since months.

"In Iran, people curse us as refugees"

A 21-year-old combatant named Razik from the Herat community hoped to become a lawyer and take computer clbades. But her mother, a widow named Siddiqa with two young girls, said that he was having trouble finding work and decided to enlist last spring. He never told his mother where he was, but he sent him $ 500 – enough to rent a dilapidated house and provide him with a cheap rug and sleeping pads.

"The war has changed into another person," Siddiqa said. , adding that Razik had returned home briefly last month but quickly returned to Iran and the front. "He says he's the breadwinner now, so he has to go fight, I have not heard from him since he left."

Naeem, a fighter who survived four deployments in Syria, said he was caught in the war. In 2015, while traveling to Iran, he vainly sought work while his family in Herat urged him to send money. Noticing posters in Tehran asking citizens to support the war effort, he decided to sign up. It was a desperate attempt that eventually sent him to an Iranian military hospital for weeks when a rocket was shot down on his chariot in the Syrian desert, rendering him unconscious

"Afghans are dying for 30 dollars a day from my eyes, "said 27-year-old Naeem, who now sells fried pastries for a few cents at a sidewalk stall in Herat, nor did she want to be completely identified for fear of official retaliation." But there is no work for us anywhere, there is only to fight, I know that I play with my life, but it is a question of necessity. "

A carefree and spirited man by nature, Naeem said that he fought back by keeping his sense of humor.When his tank unit was ambushed by the militia 's militia. Islamic state and trapped for 12 days and nights, he said that he was joking with his comrade s tank frightened and claustrophobic to keep their morale. After they were finally rescued by Syrian troops, he said that they were all posing for selfies on their tank.

The main reason he continued to work, explained Naeem, was to save enough money to marry his fiancee. Culture requires spending thousands of dollars on dowry gifts and a big wedding. But when he returned from his fourth deployment in May, his pockets overflowing with $ 700 of combat pay, the world of Naeem collapsed. He was told that the girl's family had abandoned the waiting and canceled the engagement.

That night he went out and bet everything.