February 19, 2016
The Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) have recruited thousands of undocumented Afghans living in Iran and sent them to fight in Syria since at least November 2013, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said last week. It said some of the men told HRW they had been forced to fight.
HRW said it had interviewed more than two dozen Afghans who had lived in Iran about recruitment by Iranian officials of Afghans to fight in Syria. Some said they or their relatives had been coerced to fight in Syria and either had later fled and reached Greece, or had been deported to Afghanistan for refusing to fight in Syria.
One 17-year-old said he had been forced to fight without being given the opportunity to refuse. Others said they had volunteered to fight in Syria in Iranian-organized militias, either out of religious conviction or to regularize their residence status in Iran.
“Iran has not just offered Afghan refugees and migrants incentives to fight in Syria, but several said they were threatened with deportation back to Afghanistan unless they did,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe.”
Iran hosts an estimated 3 million Afghans, but only 950,000 have formal legal status in Iran as refugees. The Iranian government has excluded the others from seeking asylum, leaving them undocumented or dependent on temporary visas.
Some of the Afghans told Human Rights Watch they had been detained by Iranian authorities and given the choice between deportation and fighting in Syria, and had chosen deportation. Others said they had volunteered to receive military training or to fight in Syria on Iran’s behalf, although they cited the need to regularize their status in Iran as an important factor in their decision.
Six of those interviewed said that Iranian forces had trained them or their relatives in military camps near Tehran and Shiraz in 2015, and four had fought in Syria for pro-government militias commanded by Iranian officials. Two of the six had joined voluntarily, while the other four said they or their relatives had been coerced or forced to fight.
They said their Iranian commanders had forced them to conduct dangerous military operations such as advancing against well-entrenched positions with only light automatic weapons and without artillery support. They said that in some instances, Iranian commanders threatened to shoot them if they failed to obey orders to advance under fire.
One Afghan told HRW he personally knew Afghan boys as young as 12 fighting in Syria in Iranian-organized groups, and that a 12-year-old boy he knew had been killed in the fighting. International law applicable in Syria prohibits both government forces and non-state armed groups from forcibly recruiting children under 18 or using them in hostilities, HRW said.