Iran recruits Afghan children to fight in Syria: HRW

By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan

An international rights watchdog on Sunday accused Iran of recruiting Afghan immigrant children to fight in Syria for the regime forces.

In a latest report, the Human Rights Watch said Afghan children in Iran as young as 14 had fought in the Fatemiyoun division, an exclusively Afghan armed group supported by Iran that fights alongside Syrian regime forces.

According to HRW, the international law considers recruiting children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities a war crime.

The watchdog said that its researchers had reviewed photographs of tombstones in Iranian cemeteries, where the authorities buried combatants killed in Syria, and identified eight Afghan children who apparently fought and died in Syria.

Iranian media reports also corroborated some of these cases and reported at least six more instances of Afghan child soldiers who died in Syria, the report added.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch urged the Tehran government to immediately end the recruitment of child soldiers and bring back any Afghan children sent to fight in Syria.

"Rather than preying on vulnerable immigrant and refugee children, the Iranian authorities should protect all children and hold those responsible for recruiting Afghan children to account," she said in the report.

The HRW previously documented cases of Afghan refugees in Iran who "volunteered" to fight in Syria in the hopes of gaining legal status for their families.

It added that since 2013, Iran had supported and trained thousands of Afghans, at least some of them undocumented immigrants, as part of the Fatemiyoun division.

It quoted Iran’s Defa Press and Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim News estimating the Fatemiyoun division to have about 14,000 fighters.

Iran hosts an estimated 3 million Afghans, many of whom have fled persecution and repeated bouts of armed conflict in Afghanistan, according to HRW. Only 950,000 have formal legal status in Iran as refugees.