According to investigations, Iran’s Ministry of Labor, in cooperation with the judiciary, continues to implement the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) program to recruit Afghan refugees who live in extreme poverty in different parts of Iran.
With a detailed plan, the IRGC will first convert Sunni Afghans to Shiism after targeting them at local mosques in different cities.
After becoming Shiites, the IRGC drafts refugees they see fit and transfer them to IRGC bases, where they train under the Liwa Fatemiyoun Brigade an IRGC proxy.
Each member of Liwa Fatemiyoun then is paid $500-1000 a month, in addition to other benefits such as food and the promise that the fighter’s family will receive citizenship in Iran after the fighter is deployed to Syria or Yemen.
The Fatemiyoun preys on impoverished Afghans working in Iran who are desperate to support their families.
The IRGC is taking advantage of hopeless Afghan refugees in Iran who are fleeing war by promising them money, and while millions are unemployed in Iran and the country struggles with extreme inflation, the Revolutionary Guards spend hundreds of billions of tomans on the Fatemiyoun Brigade to wreak havoc across the region.
Many Afghan recruits join the Fatemiyoun Division in exchange for promises of Iranian citizenship, benefits, and a monthly payment to their families in addition to the monthly salary they receive as militia members.
Those lavish promises, Fatemiyoun veterans and relatives of dead Fatemiyoun members have complained, seldom come true.
Iranian recruiters mislead the new Fatemiyoun members in yet another way: telling them they will guard venerated Syrian shrines from insurgent attacks. Instead, they send them into battle as cannon fodder.
The IRGC’s Fatemiyoun Division is a serious threat to the security of Afghanistan and other regional countries, said Muhammad Iqbal Naderi, a military analyst based in Zaranj city, Nimroz province.