Official: Iran Recruiting Afghans to Reduce Hizbullah Casualties in Syria
Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria to reduce casualties among Iranian Guards personnel and Hizbullah, a Western official said late Thursday.
Tehran strongly denies its forces are directly involved in the Syrian conflict but Hizbullah publicly acknowledged in April last year that it has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops.
Like Hizbullah and most Iranians, the Afghan recruits are Shiites and support Assad, whose Alawite faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In exchange for their recruitment of the Afghans, Iran is offering them stipends of $500 a month and residency permits, the paper said, quoting Afghans and Western officials.
Details of the recruitment drive by the elite Revolutionary Guards were posted this week on a blog catering to Afghan refugees in Iran, the Journal said.
It said this was confirmed by the office of Grand Ayatollah Mohaghegh Kabuli, an Afghan religious leader in the Iranian Shiite holy city of Qom.
The paper quoted the Western official in Iran as saying recruiting Afghans was part of a strategy to send poor foot soldiers to the battle front.
Gen. Hossein Hamedani, a senior Guards commander involved in planning war strategy in Syria, said last week that with God's help, Iran had trained an extra 130,000 soldiers ready for dispatch.
Thanks to the planning and wisdom of Iran's leaders, Syria's regime could enjoy "some stability," he said.
The 130,000 was an apparent reference to all the Shiite fighters including Iranians, Hizbullah, Afghans and other foreign fighters.
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://naharnet.com/stories/en/130818 |