Fighting for Assad: Iran's Foreign Legion

for President Assad.

SHOUTING AND RAPID GUNFIRE.

As Syria's brutal civil war enters its fifth year,

it has become a proxy conflict, drawing in actors

from across the world.

EXPLOSION.

Rebel ranks have been bolstered by waves of foreign jihadists.

But the rebels are not the only ones importing manpower.

Iran has mobilised a multi-national Shia militia army to prop up

the Assad regime.

Among them, thousands of Afghan men recruited from impoverished

and vulnerable migrant communities, living

inside Iran itself.

GUNFIRE.

The Afghan fighters are being deployed on the most

dangerous front lines.

You might ask why Afghan men with very little training

are all of a sudden thrown onto the battlefield

in a vicious war.

Well, the fact is, they are cannon fodder.

From the streets of Iran to the heart of the international

migration crisis...

CHILD CRIES.

I am Fariba Sahraei, an Iranian investigative reporter

working for the BBC.

I want to uncover the secrets of Iran's Foreign Legion,

the Afghan men sent to fight and die

for President Assad.

Allahu Akbar!

Dramatic footage from Southern Syria.

A group of rebel fighters has just captured some of the enemy.

But suddenly, there is confusion.

The terrified captives don't speak Arabic and are not Iranian.

Their faces suggest they may not even be from the Middle East.

This phone clip is evidence of a covert war, where some

of the region's poorest people are being used to fight

in a foreign conflict.

The same men later appear in a Syrian rebel propaganda video.

It turns out all of the prisoners are Afghans.

Iran is alleged to have recruited over 10,000 Afghan fighters

from impoverished Afghan-Shia communities inside Iran.

SOLDIER: Enayat Hosseini?

Hm.

I want to find out the truth behind Iran's policy of sending thousands

of Afghan men to fight in Syria.

I have come to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to meet a contact.

Mujtaba Jalili is in an Iranian born Afghan photographer.

Recently, he had been documenting an increasing number

of unusual military funerals in his home city Mashhad in Iran.

They were all for Afghans who had been killed after volunteering

to fight in Syria.

Mujtaba says he fled Iran after being detained for secretly

filming a recruitment centre for Afghan fighters

destined for Syria.

He shows me his footage, which the BBC is unable

to independently verify.

The alleged recruitment office is in a mosque in a mainly Afghan

neighbourhood of Mashhad.

Using a mosque is deliberate.

The Revolutionary Guards appeal to the Afghan's

devout religious beliefs.

They tell them terrorists are attacking Shia Muslim shrines

in Syria and that anyone who dies defending them will become a martyr.

They also offer them cash and residency permits.

But why are Afghans being sent to Syria in the first place?

Around 2.5 million Afghans leaving Iran - some fled the Russian

invasion more than 30 years ago.

Others escaped from the Taliban, and more recent conflicts.

Some have lived there for generations.

Others were born in Iran.

But few have basic rights or legal residency.

This makes them vulnerable to encouragement or even coercion

by Iran to fight for President Assad.

The background to the entry of the Afghan militias

goes back to 2012.

It was at that time that the Iranian Revolutionary

It was at that time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards decided

that the Syrian military could not succeed on their own.

The front lines were too depleted, there were not enough military

to move to all the different battlefields across the country,

and men were trying to avoid conscription.

So, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, General Jafari,

said publicly in September 2012, "We will create a force of 50,000

"men, the national defence forces.

"This militia will work alongside the Syrian military".

But 50,000?

They don't necessarily get that number just by going after Syrians.

They look to other countries that will provide in effect what is now

a mixed militia of Syrians and foreign troops

that are increasingly involved on the front lines.

If you know where to look, there is plenty of evidence

of Afghans in Syria to be found online.

SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE.

Afghan fighters have even set up their own private Facebook group,

which I have managed to join.

My new online contacts put me in touch with a former fighter

turned asylum seeker who says he is willing to talk.

So, I am heading to Germany to meet him face to face.

Amir, as we will call him, says he completed three tours

of duty in Syria as part of an all Afghan called Fatemioun

Brigade.

He tells me the Fatemioun fighters' military training was both

very short and conducted in strict secrecy.

Amir shows me photographs of himself in Syria.

He says the Revolutionary Guards told him he would be helping

to defend Shia Muslim sides against Isis,

and they offered him incentives.

Some are motivated by religious reasons, but poverty and the lack

of legal residency are the main reasons Afghans living in Iran

accept the Revolutionary Guards Syrian offer.

To find out more, I have come to a Dutch asylum processing centre.

The Smaili family are Afghans who left Iran because they faced

severe restrictions on all aspects of their life.

In Iran, most Afghan children have to study illegally, using false IDs.

And most still have to pay to access state schools that

are free for Iranians.

I asked them why they left Iran.

Bye bye!

The Ismaili family are not the only ones.

I have come to Lesbos Island in Greece.

First port of call for many migrants fleeing the Middle East.

High in the hils, an amazing sight.

Mountains of abundant life jackets - a testimony

to the scale of the Exodus.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are part of this site,

and among them, former fighters from the Fatemioun Brigade

who fled the Syrian war.

But tracking them down here won't be easy.

Thousands of desperate people are still crossing every day.

One Afghan man tells me he was detained at the border

as he was leaving Iran.

After the migrants leave the beaches of Lesbos,

They

They are

They are sent

They are sent here.

A former Greek army base.

Here, people's personal details and fingerprints are supposed to be

locked before they get permission to travel on to mainland Greece.

In the freezing weather, I start looking for ex-fighters.

I get lucky.

I find a 19-year-old Afghan man who tells me he fought in Damascus

and Aleppo for almost six months.

He paints a hellish picture of a war where Afghan fighters

are disposable.

This is the ferry port of Mytilene.

The capital of Lesbos.

Every day, thousands of migrants come here to embark on the next

stage of their epic journey to mainland Europe.

I spot a group of young Afghan men travelling together.

It seems they all fought in Syria, and one is willing to talk.

He tells me the Iranian authorities coerced him into going to war,

but when he got back to Iran, they broke their promises.

He shows me his dog tags and the temporary residency papers

he earned by going to war.

Escaping to Europe just isn't an option for some

Fatemioun members.

In February, a rebel group released this video of some prisoners

they had been hoping to exchange with the regime.

It is the same four Afghan men we saw captured

in footage over a year ago.

But the rebels say the Revolutionary Guards were not interested

in getting the Afghan POWs back.

So, they have remained in prison.

But at least they are alive.

Another day in Mashhad.

Another funeral for fallen Afghan fighters in Iran.

There are no official figures for how many Fatemioun fighters have

been killed in Syria.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has denied Tehran is sending any Afghans

to fight there at all.

A martyr's sendoff like this one might provide some solace or even

pride for the families of the dead.

But photographer Mujtaba Jalili, who filmed this footage,

thinks the Iranian authorities are cynically exploiting

the entire situation.

It doesn't matter if they Afghans don't win as long as they absorb

the rebel attacks, as long as they provide a barrier

to the rebels being able to advance.

That is a battle that Iran has fought before.

It fought it with its own people in the 1980s against Iraq.

And now we happen to see it in a different theatre,

where we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people

who have been killed and will continue to be killed,

and in that type of battle, any Afghan man is valuable

simply for his body, not for anything else.

Back in Holland, there is no guarantee that Ali his family

Back in Holland, there is no guarantee that Ali and his family

will be allowed to stay.

But he hopes to find a country he can call home,

and where he will not have to risk dying in a foreign war

to get an ID card.