A little money and a document was enough to avoid war

Isah, 25, dries his tears slipping down from his eyes, with a tissue. His cheeks are wet. He is crying. His sobs breaks up his voice. He bring his hands to his face, not to show the red-colored eyes. He cannot hide his pain. He is telling his life. His nightmare as a member of a militia on the Syrian frontline.

Since 2015, he lives in a small room located in a bucolic Swiss alpine village next to a tiny lake. Peace and silence are ruling. Things that Isah, perhaps, never experienced before. He has received the Swiss refugee status and he has finished his training to become a bricklayer. A new chance to start a again from scratch and forget the dark years he went through.

Isah brought up in Isfahan, Iran, where his parents sought refuge after Taliban took power in Afghanistan (1996). Like any other Afghan refugee in Iran, also Isah lived amid full discrimination for years. Marginalized, illegal, exploited and treated like animals, as many of his peers, Isah was soon forced to take care of his family economically. This became impossible, after he was indirectly forced to join the Syrian civil war, joining the Fatemyoun brigade, a militia which was created in 2014 and trained by the Iranian revolutionary corp guards (the Sepa-Pasdaran). Formed mostly by Afghan Shia (especially of the Hazara ethnic group, even if Isah does not belong to it), the Fatemyoun brigade had an estimate of between 20 and 30 thousand soldiers among its ranks during its full activity on the Syrian frontlines, supporting Bashar Al-Asad’s troops till 2019 (see the “go in-depth” section). Isah was blackmailed with his own freedom, being forced to live one of the worst things in the world: war.

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The Iranian revolutionary guards corps, better known as Sepa-Pasdaran, have revived, throughout their deployment in Syria next to Bashar Al-Asad's troops, a militia that was already active some years before during Afghanistan's Soviet invasion and Iran-Iraq war. With different names, the latest brigade, funded between 2013 and 2014, was named Liwa Fatemyoun or Fatemyoun Brigade. The Pasdaran trained and created it in order to fight on the Syrian and Yemeni frontlines, recruiting only Afghan Shias (mostly Hazaras). Many of them living in Iran already as refugees. But others arriving as "volunteers" from the many Afghan provinces.

During the years of its activity on the Syrian frontlines (till 2019), the Fatemyoun brigade was composed of 20-30'000 soldiers. The official purpose of the brigade is to defend Zeynab bint Ali's shirne in close to Damascus. Being the granddaughter of the prophet Muhammad and daughter of Prophet Ali, it is a holy shrine for Shiia religion. Many of them died on the battlefield but an exact number was never made public.

After 2019 and the end of the offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, many Fatemyoun are going back to Afghanistan, threatening the fragile stability of that region (see the article on Freeporting.org).

“Once, while I was driving my motorbike, police stopped me destroying the only document that I owned, which could look like a permit. They arrested me and accused me of insulting the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. A crime that could be punished with up to 3 years in jail. Of course, it was all fake. I stayed in prison for days until a man came to me. He offered me a deal, saying - “why don’t you go to Syria to help people?” – He did not mention any fighting and he promised that the government would have paid for my brother’s studies and would have given to me a new residence permit. I had no other choice being the only one able to sustain my family economically. Either the frontline or the prison. They told me that I would have stayed there only 2 months and that I would have been paid more or less 200 euros (2-3 millions of Iranian Tuman). I agreed and I was freed”.

Only 19 years old, Isah enrolled the militia, becoming a Fatemyoun. With the start of the Syrian civil war and the direct intervention of Tehran, the Iranian government found the way to take advantage of the enormous amount of hopeless Afghan refugees on their territory. They started promising little money, a naional ID or a working permit in exchange of fighting. For many jobless, illegal and psychological weak people, who lived in extreme poverty and were always escaping the authorities, the hope of a better life and a good source of income -together with the regularization of their status- was priceless. “In Iran, we Afghans were always insulted. We couldn’t go to school and we could not complain. They would put us in jail or deport us back to Afghanistan, a country, which the majority of us did not know because we never lived there” tells Isah staring at the ground of his room.

Exactly for these reasons, Isah, fell in the trap, trusting the Iranian government’s promises. And if the promises were often fake, the enrollment was more a result of blackmailing more than a voluntary act (many volunteers came from Afghanistan directly).

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“In Iran, we Afghans were always insulted. We couldn’t go to school and we could not complain. They would put us in jail or deport us back to Afghanistan, a country, which the majority of us did not know because we never lived there”

After he left the prison, he found after a few days in a training base in the middle of the desert. He did not know where he was and had no contact with the outside world. “I stayed in the center only 12 days. There were other hundreds of Afghans like me. The first days they gave us clothes. Mullahs were brainwashing us. They kept praying and saying we were heroes. But we also had to learn how to keep a gun. Many people did not even train. They only smoked hash, a very common method to forget our critical condition”.

After 12 days, during which Isah says to have shot maximum 20 Ak-47 bullets, his group was sent to Syria. End of the training. Start of the real war. “We disembarked with a plane near Damascus, Syria – he continues feeling always more the tension – After 4 days, they wanted to send us to the frontline against the Islamic State. We were close to the Iraqi border and we were sleeping in an abandoned school. I could not believe that we had been cheated so easily”. Isah refused to go. After some arguments, he was moved to the artillery: “We only shot volley of gunfire because we not able to use the real ones. We had just to scare the enemy”.

But this is also why he survived from a certain death: “One day, an assault group went to the frontline. They were surrounded and ambushed from Daesh militia men. Of the 450 ill-prepared men that were forming the group, only 30 came back alive”. Among them he particularly remembers 14 year-old boys that were killed without even knowing how to shoot. His tears, while he reminds these moments, become bigger. He weeps louder. In his mind, he still can see their faces. Friends. Children forced to become adults too early.

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"After 4 days, they wanted to send us to the frontline against the Islamic State. We were close to the Iraqi border and we were sleeping in an abandoned school. I could not believe that we had been cheated so easily”

Despite all this, his nightmare was not over. He also had to try on his skin the fear at the frontline: “They ordered me to take a group of 4 boys and guard a hill some kilometer away from the school. Since I was the oldest, they appointed me as commander. We were all very scared. We knew we would all have died soon. Together with us, there were other 20 soldiers who guarded the post before us. For some days all was calm. It was a typical desert and rocky hill. We slept in our tents. One night, I woke up hearing loads of shootings and bullets flying everywhere. Daesh was attacking the hill. My men were not able to defend themselves, so I ordered them to hide somewhere. I shot some bullets with a machine-gun, soon realizing not to be able to move my hand. I was under heavy fire. I managed to escape, slipping down from a cliff. I understood I was shot at the hand, my stomach and at one of the legs. I found my 4 soldiers still alive. But the others were all dead”.

The thought about what happened to him revives a difficult trauma to overcome. He stops for a while before starting the conversation again.

After 4 months, Isah was still in Syria. He couldn’t bear it anymore: “I was in that hell for much more time than what I was told. I insisted to go back to Iran”. Risking his life, he was “repatriated”, but breaking a contract with the Iranian government, only meant to be at risk of being imprisoned one more time. And this time, without any way out. He got money for two months. Once more he was illegal. His family was shocked when they saw him: “They did not receive any news from me for months. And now, the only way to save their lives was to disappear again. Forever. I had to go away from Iran. and the choice was not big. Rumors were that Fatemyoun militias could be jailed in Afghanistan for years. I then decided the only other possible solution: Europe”.

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“Before coming to Switzerland, I did not know what it meant to be a human being. Here I discovered what freedom and life really mean”

Isah hid in his room for some weeks without going out. He only smoke hash to forget. Then, when he took enough courage, he decided to leave and flee to Turkey, reaching the Greek coasts with a rubber boat and walking all the way through the Balkans reaching Austria and eventually Switzerland. "The Austrian told us to go to Switzerland. They said it was better" he utters. “My family, when the authorities ask about me, they say I went back to Afghanistan. Otherwise, if they would discover I am in Europe, they would kill them. I talk to them sometimes. But through a friend’s phone not to be traced”.

Eventually he raises his head: “Before coming to Switzerland, I did not know what it meant to be a human being. Here I discovered what freedom and life really mean”.

A little money and a document was enough to avoid war

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