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It was a memorial for the “martyrs” killed when the U.S. struck navy bases in Syria, in accordance with Iranian state tv.
A small crowd sat in rows of folding chairs, males within the entrance and girls within the again, on the primary cemetery in Tehran, the Iranian capital, earlier this month. Youngsters milled round and a younger man handed a field of sweets. A person recited prayers by a microphone.
However the 12 fallen males weren’t Iranians. They had been Afghans, in accordance with different troopers and native media studies, a part of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a largely neglected pressure that dates to the peak of the Syrian civil struggle a decade in the past. To assist President Bashar al-Assad of Syria beat again insurgent forces and Islamic State terrorists, Iran on the time started recruiting 1000’s of Afghan refugees to battle, providing $500 a month, education for his or her kids, and Iranian residency.
The brigade continues to be believed to be about 20,000 robust, drawn from Afghan refugees residing principally in Iran, and it serves beneath the command of the Quds Power, the abroad arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian media affiliated with the Guards and social media platforms devoted to the Fatemiyoun printed the names and pictures of the slain Afghans and stated they had been killed in U.S. strikes in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. strikes had been carried out in retaliation for a January drone assault on a navy base in Jordan that killed three American troopers. The U.S. had blamed an Iran-backed militia primarily based in Iraq for the assault.
Publicly, Iranian officers denied that any navy personnel linked to Iran had been among the many casualties. Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, instructed the U.N. Safety Council days after the U.S. strikes that Iran had no connection to the bases attacked in Iraq and Syria. He accused the U.S. of falsely blaming Iran and stated solely civilians had been killed.
The Guards didn’t problem an announcement acknowledging the deaths of the Afghans beneath their command as they sometimes do when Iranian forces are killed, nor did any official threaten to avenge the deaths.
The story of the Afghan casualties, nevertheless, emerged from no less than 4 cities throughout Iran — Tehran, Shiraz, Qum and Mashhad — the place the our bodies of the Afghans had been quietly repatriated to their households, in accordance with pictures and movies on Iranian media.
On the funeral processions, the coffins of the Afghans had been draped in inexperienced material however bore the flag of no nation. Within the cities of Mashhad, Qum and Shiraz, they had been carried to non secular shrines for blessings.
Some mourners carried the yellow flag of the Fatemiyoun Brigade with its emblem. Native officers, clerics and a consultant from the Revolutionary Guards and members of the Afghan refugee group attended among the funerals, in accordance with pictures and movies. Two little ladies sporting matching pink jackets, their hair in ponytails, wailed at their father’s coffin at one other funeral on the outskirts of Tehran.
“There’s rising anxiousness amongst Afghans that they’re getting killed and Iran will not be defending them and disowning their martyrs to guard its personal pursuits,” stated Hossein Ehsani, an knowledgeable on militants and terrorism actions within the Center East who’s Afghan and grew up as a refugee in Iran. “They really feel they’re used as cannon fodder.”
Iran’s mission to the U.N. didn’t reply to a query about whether or not Mr. Iravani, the U.N. ambassador, was conscious of the Fatemiyoun casualties when he spoke to the Safety Council.
Afghans, together with fighters for the Quds Power, expressed anger and frustration at Iran’s dealing with of those deaths, posting near-daily messages on a social media channel devoted to Fatemiyoun voices. Some members questioned the silence of the Quds Power, calling it discrimination.
Among the many males killed had been two senior commanders who had been shut allies of the slain former Quds Power commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, in accordance with Iranian media studies and pictures of them collectively within the Syrian battlefield. They had been recognized as Seyed Ali Hosseini and Seyed Hamzeh Alavi.
Mr. Suleimani was assassinated by the U.S. in 2020 in Iraq.
A lot of the Afghans who fled to Iran through the years had been Hazaras, one of many largest ethnic teams of their nation who share the Shiite Muslim religion with most Iranians.
At residence in Afghanistan, the Hazaras had been among the many pure allies of American forces as a result of they shared widespread enemies within the Taliban and in Al Qaeda. However within the convoluted panorama of the Center East as we speak, they’re now aligned with Iran and searching for to chase American forces out of the area.
In Syria, the Fatemiyoun pressure was typically the primary line of protection within the battle towards ISIS and was extensively credited for serving to take again a number of Syrian cities. The federal government newspaper Iran stated final week that no less than 3,000 members of the pressure had been killed in Syria through the years. America designated the Fatemiyoun as a terrorist group in 2019.
A former member of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Afghan who was born and raised in Iran and was deployed to Syria thrice, stated he was drawn to the pressure as a result of it supplied a chance to flee crushing poverty and unemployment in Iran and acquire authorized standing.
Asking that his that his identify not be printed for concern of retribution, he stated many fighters additionally joined out of a need to guard Shiite Islam and defeat a Sunni extremist pressure just like those that had persecuted Hazaras in Afghanistan.
One other Afghan refugee, Mohamad, a 31-year-old Hazara Shiite and a former navy officer in Afghanistan who fled to Iran when the Taliban retook the nation, stated in a phone interview that he had a grasp’s diploma however works in development. Afghans additionally should fear a couple of rising crackdowns on undocumented migrants and threats of deportation, he stated.
“One among my Afghan buddies who’s from my hometown instructed me he needs to hitch the Fatemiyoun out of pure monetary desperation and concern of being despatched again to Afghanistan,” stated Mohamad, who requested that his final identify not be used for concern of retaliation. “We’re caught, with no means ahead and no means again.”
Analysts say that there isn’t a proof that Fatemiyoun forces had been immediately concerned in assaults towards American bases in Iraq and Syria, which the Pentagon says have been focused greater than 160 occasions by Iran-backed proxies because the begin of the Israel-Hamas struggle in October. However the Fatemiyoun Brigade performs a major function in serving to Iran coordinate logistics on the bottom for the community of militias it helps, funds and arms throughout the area.
The Fatemiyoun forces oversee bases that function key stops alongside the availability chain of weapons, together with drones, missile elements and know-how, that makes its means from Iran to Iraq after which Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, in accordance with analysts and a navy strategist affiliated with the Guards, who requested to not be recognized as a result of he was not licensed to talk publicly.
“When the broader Syrian battle froze a number of years in the past, there was an expectation that Fatemiyoun would go residence, disband and demobilize,” stated Charles Lister the director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism applications on the Center East Institute in Washington. “However they’ve type of melted into the broader regional community and have discovered a job to play — holding floor, coordinating logistics and wider coordination on the bottom.”
American fighter jets destroyed the bottom the place the Fatemiyoun had been killed in Deir al-Zour, in japanese Syria, leaving a pile of rubble, mangled bricks and particles, in accordance with {a photograph} printed on the web site Saberin Information, affiliated with Iran’s proxy militias.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to remark particularly concerning the U.S. strikes killing Afghan fighters for Iran. However he stated the strikes had been carried out to carry the Guard and their proxies accountable and that “preliminary indications are that over 40 militants related to Iranian proxy teams had been killed or injured.”
Iranian commanders and key personnel had been evacuated from the bases in anticipation of the American strikes because the Biden administration signaled for almost every week that assaults had been pending. However Afghans remained on the base, one Iranian official affiliated with the Guards stated, including that navy bases couldn’t be deserted.
On the funeral for 5 of the Afghans, together with the 2 senior commanders, Hojatolislam Alireza Panahian, a distinguished conservative cleric, instructed the mourners that the enemy was “dumb” to kill susceptible Afghans.
“They’re martyrs with out borders, and jihadists for Islam and the resistance entrance.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
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