In light of the exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, author Candice Rondo in a report on the WorldPolitics Review, the US question about the role of militias loyal to Iran in the complexity of the US strategy.
The return of a wave of fighters from the Fatimiyon Brigade, an Iranian-backed militia made up of Hazara Afghans fighting in Syria since the early days of the civil war, shows Tehran expects a completely different kind of proxy war.
While most of the focus has been on the repercussions of the Syrian war, specifically on the dangers posed by the return of the fighters of the state organization to their countries, the effects of the return of thousands of Iranian agents from Syrian territory to their country have been overlooked.
According to an Afghan researcher named Ahmad Shuja Jamal, in a report to the US Institute of Peace, some 50,000 people took up arms in Syria to defend the regime of Bashar al-Assad on behalf of Tehran, noting that many of them agreed to fight on their own thanks to salaries And the tempting promises of citizenship or residence in Iran upon their return from Syria.
Over the past three months, hundreds of fighters belonging to Iranian proxy militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have poured into Iran in response to a request from Iran's Qods Force commander Qassim Soleimani to help with flood relief that has flooded the country since March.
The Iraqi fighters of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Popular Support Forces were the first to respond to the appeal, and were soon followed by Afghan fighters from the Fatimiyyah Brigade.
The continued flow of Iranian militias into Iran in recent weeks has provoked violent reactions, the author said. As protests mount against the dire economic conditions that erupted in 2018 in the east of Iran in the minds of many people, some worry that the return of Iranian agents to the interior reflects a state of uneasiness in Tehran over the growing possibility of regime change.
The political tensions are on the rise, especially among pro-regime militants who are determined to challenge the United States and the Iranian people under the pressure of ongoing local cultural wars, conservative clerics are trying to limit or completely eliminate any Western influence, the writer said.
Fears
Meanwhile, the return of fighters from the Fatimun brigade to Afghanistan, especially to villages in the west of the country near the Iranian border, has raised concerns about what role they could play if the United States signed a deal with the Taliban and withdrew more troops from the country.
The writer said that influential people in Afghanistan, whether official or non-official are different on whether the return of these fighters to Iran is a positive or negative.
On the one hand, the Afghan government security forces pursued the former fighters of the "Fatimun" brigade for fear of causing them instability. On the other hand, for Afghan non-government Shi'ite elites who aspire to defend their interests, the presence of veterans coming from Syrian battlefields to fight the Taliban or the organization of the state or other Sunni jihadi factions in the next phase of Afghanistan's eternal war may be useful.
The writer noted that the return of fighters belonging to the brigade "Fatmayoun" to Iran may not pose a threat to the stability of the region, rumors within their ranks that they lack discipline and unity during their participation in the Syrian war, but they have certainly demonstrated their ability to survive.
While Congress is debating the credibility of the White House's claims of an impending threat to US interests by Iranian proxies, Trump's lawmakers and officials will try to influence the Qods Force's decision to summon agents and reassign them.
Their reconfigured mission certainly shows that regime change in Iran is not going to be easy, but rather likely to have unexpected effects on the US exit strategy in Afghanistan.