The Iranian reigme has started sending undocumented Afghan immigrants to Syria to serve as frontline fighters alongside Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s struggling troops.
The Afghans are almost all Shiite Muslims from the Hazara ethnic group who were living as illegal immigrants in Iran until they were rounded up by the regime’s Revolutionary Guard.
They were given the choice of either fighting in Syria or going to jail, according to German magazine Der Spiegel.
The magazine has estimated that at least 700 Afghans have now been killed in fighting around Aleppo and Damascus alone.
This reliance upon Afghan fighters is part of Iran’s strategy of support for the Assad regime, which is coming under increasing pressure from opposition fighters.
It also advances Iran’s larger strategy in the Middle East, according to researcher Philip Smyth, who noted in a report how Tehran is coordinating a ‘Shi’ite jihad’ in Syria, using its militant proxies in Iraq and Lebanon to portray the defense of the Assad regime as a religious obligation.
Meanwhile an Afghan news website published a report on how the Iranian regime recruits Afghan immigrants:
Morad Ali, an Afghan refugee in Iran, was sentenced to six years in connection to smuggling drugs. Few months later Ali meets some recruiters inside the prison and got an offer for freedom but in one condition to join the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
The offer also includes $600 a month and paper to live in Iran as a permanent resident. All will be given if Ali agrees to travel to Syria and fight in favor of Assad regime.
To escape Prison brutal life, Morad Ali takes the offer and agrees to join the training camp where he meets dozens more Afghan prisoners now preparing to become heroes in the front-line. In a week or more Ali along with other young Afghans deployed in a lonely tall building In Syria, Bashar al-Assad territories. Morad Ali was later captured by Syrian opposition.
The Iranian regime has dispatched hundreds of Afghan prisoners and undocumented Afghan immigrants to Syria and has forced them fight against Syrian people.
Not many of these youngsters have returned yet to Iran and the rumor already begun spreading within Afghan communities in Iran that the ”Freedom Offer” is a trap. The choice is to either be killed or captured.
