The fate of two brothers from Kabul, one grievously wounded, the other killed fighting in Syria, spotlights the Iranian regime’s covert but active recruitment of Afghan refugees to buttress Bashar al-Assad’s steadily depleting forces, the French news agency AFP reported.
Interviews with Afghan fighters and relatives of combatants killed in Syria point to a vigorous — and sometimes coerced — recruitment drive of Shiite Hazara refugees by the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps propping up Assad’s floundering regime.
AFP wrote: “Tears well up in Jehantab’s rheumy eyes as she recalls the haunting parting words of her husband, 35-year-old Haider, when he called two months ago from Tehran: ‘I am going to Syria — and I may not come back.'”
“‘Very few fighters survive Syria’s brutal conflict’, he told me,” said Jehantab, swaddled in a white scarf and sitting with three young children on the floor of her Kabul home.
Haider, she said, was lured by the monthly salary of $700 — a tidy sum for a labourer with no combat experience — and the promise of an Iranian residency permit, an attractive inducement for refugees who otherwise live in constant fear of deportation.
“I begged him: ‘Don’t go, don’t kill yourself for money’,” said Jehantab, who asked to be identified only by her first name in order not to jeopardise her chances of getting the permit.
Haider’s premonition came true — a few days after he left, an official of the Iranian regime informed his relatives, also refugees in Tehran, that he had been killed in battle.
Haider was part of a growing wave of jobless young Afghans seeking shelter in neighbouring Iran from decades of turmoil and war tearing their country apart, only to be ensnared in another conflict.
“In terms of how they are recruited, deployed, and utilised in Syria, many Afghan Shiite fighters have suffered the fate of being used as cannon fodder,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shiite militant groups, who estimates there are 2,000 to 3,500 Afghans currently fighting in Syria.
“Some are coerced to fight, others promised residency papers for their family, and a small salary. It demonstrates Iran’s exploitation of Afghan Shiite refugees,” he said.
In a video posted online apparently by anti-Assad rebels last year, a dazed and bloodied Afghan militiaman is seen confessing that he was an illegal immigrant in Iran, where authorities offered him $600 a month to fight in Syria — or face deportation.
But some Afghans like 27-year-old Mohammed have joined the fight to protect their sect, in particular the defence of the golden-domed Sayyeda Zainab, a prominent Shiite shrine located in a Damascus suburb, AFP wrote.
“A construction labourer in Tehran, he said he was flown with dozens of other Afghan fighters to Damascus seven months ago on a civilian plane after a week-long weapons-training course,” the report said.
“Part of the all-Afghan Fatemiyoun brigade, named after the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, the guerrilla said he fought alongside Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Shiite militia from Lebanon.”
“The rise of Fatemiyoun and other Iran-backed forces made up of Iraqis, Lebanese and Pakistani Shiites underscores Assad’s growing reliance on foreign mercenaries as rebels ramp up attacks on Damascus.”
“In a rare admission in July Assad, who has faced a series of recent battlefield losses, acknowledged a manpower shortage faced by his government’s army amid growing deaths and defections.”
“Back in Jehantab’s home, Haider’s cousin Zahra consoled her and quietly fumed over his death ‘in a war that isn’t ours’.”
“‘Going to Syria is like signing up for a suicide mission,’ Zahra said in a phone call to Hussein, Haider’s brother who also volunteered to fight in Syria, where he suffered a deep shrapnel wound to his stomach.”
“‘I’m OK. There were 300-400 of us (Afghans). Many died, I survived,’ Hussein said in a frail voice from a hospital bed in Tehran just before he was about to be wheeled into surgery.”
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