Iran 'recruiting Afghans' to fight in Syria

Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, the Wall StreetJournal reported.In exchange, Iran is offering them stipends of $500 a month and residency permits,the paper said, quoting Afghans and Western officials. Shiite Muslim Iran is a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad in the three-year-old waragainst mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents seeking to oust him.Details of the recruitment drive by the elite Revolutionary Guards were posted thisweek on a blog catering to Afghan refugees in Iran, the Journal said.It said this was confirmed by the office of Grand Ayatollah Mohaghegh Kabuli, anAfghan religious leader in the Iranian Shiite holy city of Qom.The paper quoted a Western official in Iran as saying recruiting Afghans was part ofa strategy to send poor foot soldiers to the battle front.The aim was to reduce casualties among Iranian Guards personnel and Lebanon'sHezbollah militia, a close Tehran ally, the official said.Tehran strongly denies its forces are directly involved in the Syrian conflict butHezbollah publicly acknowledged in April last year that it has been fightingalongside Assad's troops.Like Hezbollah and most Iranians, the Afghan recruits are Shiites and support Assad,whose Alawite faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Journal said. Source: AFP