'Just about money': Iran recruits Afghans for Syria fight

KABUL (AFP) - Fleeing grinding poverty and unemployment, thousands of Afghan Shi'ites have been recruited by Iran to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, former fighters and rights activists say.

Afghan men and boys as young as 14 are signing up to fight on the promise of money and legal residency in Shi'ite-dominated Iran, Assad's regional ally, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Since 2013 the Afghans, including undocumented migrants living in Iran, have joined the Teheran-backed Fatemiyoun division fighters in Syria, said HRW and ex-members who spoke to AFP on condition their real names were not used.

"For me it was just about money," said Shams, a former fighter.

The 25-year-old, a member of the Hazara ethnic group, went to Syria twice in 2016 to fight in a conflict that has now been raging for more than six years.

"Whoever I saw was going for money and to have free entry to Iran. I never saw anyone fighting for religious reasons," said Shams, who now lives in the Afghan capital Kabul.

The withdrawal of US-led Nato combat troops at the end of 2014 drained the Afghan economy and left many people out of work, fuelling the flow of migrants into Iran in search of a better life.

HRW estimated last year that Iran hosts around three million Afghans.

In this desperate pool Iranian recruiters targeted  to swell the ranks of Fatemiyoun soldiers, who HRW says fight alongside Syrian government forces.

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The number of IRGC-affiliated militias in Syria stands at over 100,000. Most of these forces are Afghan, Iraqi, Lebanese and Pakistani mercenaries. About a third of them are Syrian militias who have been organized by the IRGC like the Basij in Iran. All of these forces are financed, armed, controlled and commanded by the IRGC.

On January 14, 2017, Brigadier General Hussein Yekta, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards and responsible for Khatam's headquarters, announced that the number of Afghans under the command of the IRGC in Syria, organized as part of the Fatemiyoun Division, is 18,000. Afghans living in Iran are forced to go to the Syrian war because of poverty, unemployment, lack of legal documents and various pressures by the regime.