rferl.org – When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country’s Shi’ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi’a inside Afghanistan.
The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population — mainly Hazara — are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi’ite majority in Iran.
With the Syrian war ebbing, several thousand Fatemiyoun fighters have returned to their homeland, prompting fears that Iran could mobilize the proxy group to target U.S. interests in neighboring Afghanistan, where some 13,000 American troops are stationed.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have soared following the U.S.
killing of Iran’s top military commander, Major General Qasem
Soleimani, in a drone strike at the Baghdad airport on January 3. In
retaliation, Tehran fired missiles at an Iraqi air base that houses U.S.
forces.
“We should certainly be concerned about the risk of Iran using this
asset in Afghanistan to go after U.S. troops or other American interests
in the country,” said Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
“Let’s be clear: At least right now, there are more than 10,000 American
soldiers across Iran’s eastern border. That’s a tempting target, and
these [Shi’ite] fighters in Afghanistan give Tehran a potentially useful
proxy to go after those troops,” he added.
‘Immediate Threat’
Rahmatullah Nabil, the two-time head of Afghanistan’s National
Directorate of Security (NDS), the country’s main intelligence agency,
estimated that between 2,500 to 3,000 Fatemiyoun fighters have returned
to Afghanistan.
“At this stage it seems they are not in a position to pose an immediate
threat to Afghanistan’s national security,” said Nabil, who was
intelligence chief from 2010-12 and 2013-15. “They are not organized but
scattered in different parts of the country.”
But he said the former members of the Fatemiyoun Brigade could pose a threat if they “establish a central command.”
Nabil said it was unclear if Afghan intelligence — predominately
focused on the war against the Taliban and the Islamic State (IS) — was
monitoring the movements of the fighters.
Most of the ex-fighters have settled in their homes in central
Afghanistan, which is predominately Hazara, and in Hazara settlements in
the western part of the country, along the border with Iran.
Many of the former combatants have kept a low profile and have refused to talk on the record with journalists.
“This is a group that has not indicated a willingness to stage attacks
in Afghanistan,” said Kugelman. “To this point, Tehran has leveraged it
to fight in Syria and help pursue Iranian goals there. But given the
increasingly volatile state of play in the Middle East and Iran’s
certain efforts to seek reprisals against U.S. interests, the situation
could well change.”
‘Cannon Fodder’
The total number of Fatemiyoun members who fought in Syria is unclear. Experts estimate the number was between 5,000 to 20,000.
Ali Alfoneh is an IRGC expert and a senior fellow at The Arab Gulf
States Institute in Washington. He said that according to his database,
from January 2012 to September 2019 around 917 Afghan nationals were
killed in Syria.
As the first line of attack, the poorly trained proxy force suffered
from attrition rates as high as 20 percent, Alfoneh said, estimating
that the Afghan presence in Syria was likely limited to 5,000 fighters.
Alfoneh says the IRGC considered the Afghan fighters “cannon fodder,”
considering the seemingly minor investment made to train them and the
exposure they faced on the battlefield.
Iranian authorities said the fighters traveled to Syria voluntarily to defend holy Shi’ite sites. Human rights groups said Afghan migrants and refugees in Iran were offered financial rewards and Iranian residency permits to join the fight in Syria.
The United Nations estimates the number of Afghan citizens in Iran at
just under 1 million, but Tehran puts the figure closer to 3 million.
Tehran has expelled many Afghans and periodically threatens those who
remain with mass expulsions.
Readying For U.S. Withdrawal
Alefoneh said it was plausible that Iran was deploying Fatemiyoun
members to Afghanistan as part of Tehran’s two-prong attempt to prepare
for a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“On the one hand, Tehran has normalized relations with the Taliban,
which in Tehran’s analysis will seize power in Kabul before long,” he
said. “On the other hand, Tehran is preparing for a scenario in which
the Taliban once again turns against Iran in the future.”
The Taliban controls or influences around half of Afghanistan. The
militant group is locked in negotiations with the United States over the
withdrawal of all foreign troops from the war-torn country. A
withdrawal deal is expected to kickstart intra-Afghan talks over a
political settlement that is likely to see the Taliban form part of a
new government.
Iran and the Taliban were on the verge of war in 1998, when the group
controlled most of Afghanistan. Eight Iranian diplomats and an employee
of Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency were killed at the Iranian
Consulate when Taliban fighters overran the Afghan city of Mazar-e
Sharif. The Taliban denied any involvement in their deaths.
Outraged by the deaths, Tehran deployed tens of thousands of troops
along the border with Afghanistan — but stopped short of invading the
country.
Tehran backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance before the U.S.-led
invasion in 2001. Iran provided help to U.S. forces that toppled the
Taliban regime. But, in recent years, the Islamic republic and the
Taliban have forged closer ties, with militant leaders even visiting
Tehran.
Long History With Afghanistan
U.S. officials have accused Tehran of providing support to the Taliban,
an allegation it denies. Tehran has confirmed it has contacts with the
Taliban but insists that any communications are aimed at ensuring the
safety of Iranian citizens in Afghanistan and encouraging the Taliban to
join peace talks.
Marine General Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander for the Middle
East, said there has been an increase in Iranian activity in Afghanistan
that poses a risk to American troops.
McKenzie, who visited Afghanistan last week, said he was seeing a “worrisome trend” of Iranian malign interference.
“Iran has always sort of dabbled a little bit in Afghanistan, but they see perhaps an opportunity to get after us and the coalition here through their proxies,” McKenzie said. “So we are very concerned about that here as we go forward.”
Ismail Qaani, who in January succeeded Soleimani as head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, the overseas operations arm of the IRGC, has a long history with Afghanistan.
The 63-year-old general made a mysterious trip to Afghanistan in 2018. Qaani also visited Kabul in the same year.
In the 1980s, Qaani led the IRGC’s activities in Afghanistan.
In the 1990s, Qaani was involved in providing logistical, financial, and military support to the Northern Alliance, which was fighting the Taliban.
When the Syrian civil war erupted, Qaani is believed to have been personally involved in the organization of the Fatemiyoun Brigade. It included veterans of the Abuzar Brigade, an Afghan militia consisting of Shi’a who had fought on Iran’s side in the war against Iraq.