Iran sending Afghan refugees to fight in Syria — rights group

Human Rights Watch says many fled after Tehran presented them with ultimatum to fight or be deported

By ToI Staff 30 January 2016, 8:09 pm

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Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, speaks with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, left, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015 (Syrian presidency Facebook page)

Iran has sent thousands of Afghan refugees to fight for the embattled regime in Syria over the past two years, with many saying they were coerced, the Human Rights Watch organization has claimed.

In a report released Friday, HRW said that towards the end of last year it interviewed more than two dozen Afghan refugees who had lived in Iran. Some told the group that they or family members had fled to Greece or been deported back to their home country after refusing to fight, while a 17-year-old told the group that he had been forced into fighting without any chance of refusal.

Others, however, said they had chosen to fight “out of religious conviction,” or even simply to secure their status in Iran, the NGO claimed. Some said that they had been given an ultimatum by Iran — fight or be deported.

“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,” the HRW report quotes its emergencies director Peter Bouckaert as saying. “Faced with this bleak choice, some of these Afghan men and boys fled Iran for Europe.”

Iranian mourners carry the coffin of Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a commander of the Islamic republic's Revolutionary Guards killed in an Israeli air strike on the weekend on Syria, during his funeral procession in Tehran on January 21, 2015. (Photo credit: AFP/ATTA KENARE) — Iranian mourners in Tehran carry the coffin of Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a commander of the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guards killed in an Israeli air strike on Syria, Jan. 21, 2015. (AFP/ATTA KENARE)

According to HRW, there are some 3 million Afghans in Iran, of which just 950,000 are legally recognized as refugees. The rest, the groups says, have been excluded from the asylum process by the Iranian government.

Iran is a key supporter of Bashar Assad’s regime, which has for close to five years been waging a brutal battle with opposition forces to hold onto power. Iran has sent its own fighters to assist Assad, as has Shiite terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon and avowed enemy of Israel.