Impoverished Afghans were recruited by Iran as fighters and sent to the battlefields of Syria’s civil war. Now they’re returning home to Afghanistan.
In This Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019, photo, Afghans return to Afghanistan at the Islam Qala border with Iran, in the western Herat Province. Security officials worry that Iranian-backed Afghan veterans of the war in Syria will one day become a secret army for Tehran in Afghanistan itself, particularly after a U.S. withdrawal. Iran paid, trained and armed thousands of Afghan Shiites to fight in Syria to defend its ally, President Bashar Assad.
Iran ran an extensive drive to bring Shiites from across the region and create a network of militias to help save Assad from the uprising against his rule — not only Afghans but also Pakistanis, Iraqis and Lebanese. Now with the 8-year war in Syria winding down, the question is what will Tehran do with those well-trained, well-armed forces.
Just knowing people who fought in Syria can land someone in jail, said a local elder in a village near Herat. He spoke on condition of anonymity for that reason. Eight men from his village were killed fighting in Syria, but there are no graves for them here. All were buried in Iran, he said. Roughly 10,000 veterans of the brigade have returned to Afghanistan, says a senior official in Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry who is familiar with government intelligence. The official was not authorized to brief reporters and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
All those factions could turn their massive arsenals on each other after a U.S. and NATO withdrawal. It has happened before. In the early 1990s, factions of the U.S.-backed mujahedeen who took power after the Soviet withdrawal turned on each other in fighting that leveled large parts of the capital, Kabul, and killed an estimated 50,000 people.
Most of those who joined the Fatimiyoun Brigade were driven by hopelessness and poverty, not loyalty to Iran, said Reza Kasimi, a researcher with the independent Kabul-based research group, Afghanistan Analysts Network. An Afghan friend suggested they enlist for Syria. As a fighter for Iran, they could earn the equivalent of $900 a month. At the time Mehdi was making barely $150 a month.
In Damascus, the recruits opened bank accounts where their salary would be deposited. They were taken to the shrine of Sayeda Zeinab, a site outside Damascus revered by Shiites, for final blessings before battle. The next day, they were taken by bus to the northern city of Aleppo and sent immediately to the front.
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