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Iran has a long history of building up militant ethnic groups across the Middle East to wage unconventional fights against Israel, Western interests, and, more recently, Sunni Salafists. In due course, the Afghan and Pakistani Shiite proxies it has recruited to help defend the Assad regime in Syria have become significant forces that could ultimately be used to either quell or fan the flames of other regional conflicts.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

After Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, Iran deployed conventional military units to Syria to help fend off further Israeli advances. Yet when the outside help promised by Arab countries failed to materialize, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini knew that his forces could not withstand an Israeli onslaught without a direct line of supply to Lebanon, so he ordered them back and instead chose to arm and train Lebanese Shiite militant groups as proxies. Tehran later used this same model to organize the Mohammad Corps in Afghanistan, Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Badr Corps and other militias in Iraq (for the latest on Iraq’s current Shiite militias, see PolicyWatch 2674, “Should Iraq’s ISCI Forces Really Be Considered ‘Good Militias’?“). It also formed the elite Qods Force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to support these groups and conduct foreign military and intelligence operations.

In recent years, the Qods Force has increased its recruitment of young fighters from Afghan and Pakistani Shiite communities. Afghanistan has around 4.6 million Shiites, or 15 percent of the population; they mainly live in the central part of the country and are often targeted by the Taliban. Iran is home to a sizable Afghan community of its own, with over 70 percent of them being Tajiks and Hazaras; the latter are predominantly Shiite. Some of these Afghans live and work there without proper documentation and in constant fear of being deported back to Afghanistan, where around View Full Article