US strike killed Afghans recruited to fight for Iran
According to Iranian state television, it was a memorial to the “martyrs” killed when the US attacked military bases in Syria.
A small crowd sat in rows of folding chairs, men in the front and women in the back, at the main cemetery in Tehran, the Iranian capital, earlier this month. Children walked around and a young man passed around a box of sweets. A man recited prayers through a microphone.
But the twelve fallen men were not Iranians. According to other soldiers and local media reports, they were Afghans part of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a largely overlooked fighting force dating back to the height of Syria's civil war a decade ago. To help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria beat back Islamic State rebels and terrorists, At the time, Iran began recruiting thousands of Afghan refugees to fight, offering $500 a month, education for their children and a stay in Iran.
The Brigade It is still believed to be around 20,000 strongdrawn from Afghan refugees living mainly in Iran, and is under the command of the Quds Force, the overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian media affiliated with the Guard and social media platforms dedicated to the Fatemiyoun published the names and photos of the slain Afghans, saying they had been killed in US strikes in Iraq and Syria. The US strikes were carried out in retaliation for a January drone strike on a military base in Jordan that killed three US soldiers. The US had blamed an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq for the attack.
Iranian officials publicly denied that soldiers linked to Iran were among the victims. Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iranani told the UN Security Council days after the US attacks that Iran had no connection to the attacked bases in Iraq and Syria. He accused the US of falsely blaming Iran and said only civilians had been killed.
The Guards have not issued a statement acknowledging the deaths of Afghans under their command, as they usually do when Iranian troops are killed, nor have any officials threatened to avenge the deaths.
However, the story of the Afghan victims emerged from at least four cities in Iran – Tehran, Shiraz, Qum and Mashhad – where the bodies of the Afghans were quietly repatriated to their families, according to photos and videos on Iranian media.
At the funeral processions, the Afghans' coffins were draped in green cloth but did not carry the flag of any nation. In the cities of Mashhad, Qum and Shiraz they were carried to religious shrines for blessings.
Some mourners carried the yellow flag of the Fatemiyoun Brigade with its emblem. Local officials, clergy and a representative of the Revolutionary Guard and members of the Afghan refugee community attended some of the funerals, photos and videos show. Two little girls, wearing matching pink jackets and their hair in ponytails, cried at their father's coffin during another funeral on the outskirts of Tehran.
“There is a growing fear among Afghans that they are being killed and Iran is not protecting them or denying their martyrs to protect its own interests,” said Hossein Ehsani, an Afghan expert on militants and terror movements in the Middle East who grew up. as a refugee in Iran. “They feel like they are being used as cannon fodder.”
Iran's mission to the UN did not respond when asked whether Mr Iravani, the UN ambassador, was aware of the Fatemiyoun victims when he spoke to the Security Council.
Afghans, including Quds Force fighters, expressed their anger and frustration over Iran's handling of these deaths, posting almost daily on a social media channel dedicated to the voices of Fatemiyoun. Some members questioned the Quds Force's silence, calling it discrimination.
The killed men included two senior commanders who were close allies of slain former Quds Force commander Major General Qassim Suleimani, according to Iranian media reports and photos of them together on the Syrian battlefield. They were identified as Seyed Ali Hosseini and Seyed Hamzeh Alavi.
Mr Suleimani was murdered by the US in 2020 in Iraq.
Most of the Afghans who have fled to Iran over the years have been Hazaras, one of the largest ethnic groups in their country who share the Shia Muslim faith with most of Iranians.
At home in Afghanistan, the Hazaras were among the natural allies of the U.S. military, as they shared common enemies in the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But in today's complicated landscape of the Middle East, they are now allying with Iran and trying to drive American forces out of the region.
In Syria, the Fatemiyoun force has often been the first line of defense in the fight against ISIS and has been widely credited with helping to retake several Syrian cities. The government newspaper Iran said last week that at least 3,000 members of the armed forces have been killed in Syria over the years. The United States designated the Fatemiyoun as a terrorist organization in 2019.
A former member of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Afghan who was born and raised in Iran and deployed three times to Syria, said he was drawn to the force because it offered an opportunity to escape Iran's crushing poverty and unemployment and acquire legal status.
Asking that his name not be published for fear of retaliation, he said many fighters had also joined out of a desire to protect Shia Islam and defeat a Sunni extremist force similar to those the Hazaras had fought in Afghanistan continued.
Another Afghan refugee, Mohamad, a 31-year-old Hazara Shiite and former military officer in Afghanistan who fled to Iran when the Taliban retook the country, said in a telephone interview that he had a master's degree but works in construction. Afghans should also be concerned about the increasing crackdown on undocumented migrants and the threat of deportation, he said.
“One of my Afghan friends from my hometown told me that he wants to join the Fatemiyoun out of sheer financial desperation and fear of being sent back to Afghanistan,” said Mohamad, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of retaliation. . “We are stuck, with no way forward and no way back.”
Analysts say there is no evidence that Fatemiyoun's forces were directly involved in attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, which the Pentagon says have been targeted more than 160 times since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October Iranian-backed allies. . But the Fatemiyoun Brigade plays an important role in helping Iran coordinate on-the-ground logistics for the network of militias it supports, finances and arms across the region.
The Fatemiyoun forces oversee bases that serve as key stops in the supply chain of weapons, including drones, missile parts and technology, that makes its way from Iran to Iraq and then Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to analysts and an affiliated military strategist. with the Guards, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
“When the broader Syrian conflict froze a few years ago, there was an expectation that Fatemiyoun would go home, disband and demobilize,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “But they have kind of been absorbed into the broader regional network and found a role to play: holding ground, coordinating logistics and broader coordination on the ground.”
US fighter jets destroyed the base where the Fatemiyoun were killed in Deir al-Zour, eastern Syria, leaving behind a pile of rubble, mangled stones and rubble, according to a photo published on the website Saberin News, affiliated with the Iranian proxy militias.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment specifically on the U.S. strikes that killed Afghan fighters for Iran. But he said the attacks were carried out to hold the Guard and their allies accountable and that “initial indications are that more than 40 militants linked to Iranian proxy groups were killed or injured.”
Iranian commanders and key personnel were evacuated from the bases in anticipation of American attacks while the Biden administration signaled for almost a week that attacks were coming. But the Afghans remained at the base, an Iranian Guard official said, adding that military bases should not be abandoned.
At the funeral of five Afghans, including the two senior commanders, Hojatolislam Alireza Panahian, a prominent conservative cleric, told mourners that the enemy was “stupid” to kill vulnerable Afghans.
“They are martyrs without borders, and jihadists for Islam and the resistance front.”
Erik Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington.