Sunni-Shia battle royale.
BEIRUT – As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gained the upper hand over an internal uprising in the past year, he received a major boost from his allies across the Middle East. The Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Iranian military advisors, have all been key in turning the tide of the battle. Now, it appears a new group has entered the fray on the side of the Assad regime: Shiite fighters from Afghanistan.
After a dozen years in Afghanistan and thousands of Americans lives lost, the United States also finds itself in an awkward position by the flow of foreign fighters to Syria. While the U.S. occupation of the country was intended to pave the way for the eradication of lawless militias, fighters from Afghanistan are now engaged on both sides of the Syrian conflict. In addition to the Afghan Shiite fighters, a small number of Afghan jihadists have also joined the rebel cause. This dynamic is even clearer in Iraq, where Shiite militias and Sunni jihadists have also joined the Syrian battle – reopening old sectarian wounds and threatening the fragile stability back home.
Now, the Syrian war may be helping to bring these same Sunni-Shiite animosities to Southeast Asia. At the behest of Saudi Arabia, Pakistani military trainers have already been employed to train Syrian rebels – even as Pakistan struggles with sectarian violence that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Shiites over the past year. One Pakistani source cited this violence as one of the most important reasons that Islamabad could not intervene more aggressively in Syria, saying simply, “They have their hands full.”
Tasnim News Agency, an Iranian news site close to the country’s hardliners, reported recently that 10 Afghan fighters were “martyred” in Syria defending the Sayyida Zeinab Shrine, a Shiite holy site south of Damascus. The bodies of the fighters, according to the article, were then sent to Iran where they were buried in the cities of Mashhad, Isfahan, Tehran, and Qom. The funeral for two of the fighters in Qom, Ibrahim Rezai and Najibullah Mirzai, was reportedly attended by a large number of Afghan refugees.