According to reports by human rights researchers and journalists, recruitment of Afghan fighters can take place anywhere from mosques in Iran to Shia neighbourhoods across Afghanistan.
"In many Afghani towns there are Shia mosques," an Afghan returning soldier said in an exclusive interview with the UK-based Kayhan newspaper. "The imams and prayer leaders give sermons about these issues and if anyone wants to volunteer, they arrange contacts with the IRGC. We travel by land from Afghanistan to Tehran."
For some, the fear of deportation looms if they choose not to serve in the army. Last May, a bill was passed by the Iranian parliament, which permitted family members of slain foreign soldiers in Syria who reside in Iran to be granted immediate citizenship.
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They did not give us a choice; they forced us to train and fight.
They said: 'You will fight in Syria and become a martyr, and that is a
good thing.' |
Masheed Ahmadzai, a 17-year-old Tehran resident who arrived last year on a rubber boat at the Greek island of Lesbos, told researchers that he had been living undocumented for four years and was working in construction when police detained him and his cousin.
He said that police took them to a military base, where numerous other Afghanis and Pakistanis were being detained, and military officers selected the men most physically fit.
"The military officers separated us into those fit to fight, and those not fit to fight," he said. "They took me with a group of 20 men, but did not select my cousin and deported him to Afghanistan …They did not give us a choice; they forced us to train and fight. They said: 'You will fight in Syria and become a martyr, and that is a good thing.'"
While many of Iran's fighters in Syria register in the Basij, a paramilitary volunteer militia operating under IRGC, thousands of others serve as paid soldiers under the IRGC's Fatemiyoun unit, mainly made up of Shia from the diaspora in Iran.
Estimates of fighters' salaries have ranged from around $500 to $750 a month, according to media reports. But in a recent interview with reporters from Iran, Brigadier-General Mohammad Ali Falaki, a retired IRGC commander who was deployed to Syria, said that foreign fighters actually earn just $100 a month - a figure some speculated was being played down because of the struggling Iranian economy.
Falaki also acknowledged the insufficient support in Iran for Afghan refugees, which he viewed as an untapped pool of recruits.
But in the eyes of some analysts, the geopolitical costs for Iran's military involvement in Syria have been high.
"Iran's actions in Syria totally undermine their claim to representing the global Muslim community," said Mohammad Fadel, an associate professor of law at the University of Toronto. "It reinforces the idea that Iran is a clearly sectarian state."
For a long time, Fadel points out, there were two different narratives about Iran - that it was a sectarian state. Then there was another that viewed Iran as a kind of revolutionary, anti-imperial state - one that supported Muslims and self-determination and was more or less an ally of the people. "Iran's intervention [in Syria] completely destroyed that second narrative."
The overt religious rhetoric about protecting the shrines of the Prophet's family reinforced their sectarian stance, Fadel added. "It implied that those who were against Assad were against the Prophet's family. It's obvious there is a strand in the Sunni community who object to shrines, but to then paint the entire Syrian revolution with that brush - and then imply that protecting these shrines merits a type of violence - is something else."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/thousands-iranians-fighting-syria-161120090537447.html
