Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday thanked North Korea for sending troops to fight alongside Russia in Moscow's war against Ukraine and vowed not to forget their sacrifices. Putin's comments came just hours after North Korea confirmed for the first time that it had deployed troops to fight Ukrainian forces. -snip- In a statement, Putin praised North Korean troops who he said fought "shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters, defended our Motherland as their own." "The Russian people will never forget the heroism of the DPRK special forces," Putin said. "We will always honor the heroes who gave their lives...

Okean Elzy is one of the top bands in Ukraine. It has a kitschy, stadium rock style, and songs with patriotic themes that for decades have provided the soundtrack to anti-Russia protests. Tickets to its concerts are highly prized. But they suddenly became available after the first of three sold-out concerts in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Friday night. The reason? Draft officers and the police had waited outside the concert hall, looking for men trying to dodge military service in the country’s war with Russia. They asked men to see their draft papers and detained those who had not registered....

Iranian Entanglements McCain was right the first time — Iran is helping al-Qaeda in Iraq. By Christopher W. Holton In recent weeks, two news reports have circulated about Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda. On Tuesday, March 18, Sen. John McCain repeatedly stated that Iran was aiding al-Qaeda in Iraq. Later, however, he retracted this statement. Senator McCain was right the first time. In fact, al-Qaeda and Iran have a rather long history of cooperation. A few days before Senator McCain’s unfortunate retraction, a senior military adviser to the Barack Obama campaign, retired Air Force general Merrill McPeak, was quoted in the...

Iran, Friend of the Sunni Terrorists (Surprise!) [Michael Ledeen] I guess I've been saying and writing this for more than seven years, but it's always nice to have support, especially when, as in this case, it comes from the general manager of al Arabiya TV, and a columnist in several publications in the Middle East. That is to say, not a neocon. Abdul Rahman al-Rashed states quite categorically: ...Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of...

Iran has sent 15,000 fighters to Syria to reverse recent battlefield setbacks for Syrian government troops and wants to achieve results by the end of the month, a Lebanese political source has told The Daily Star. The militia force, made up of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, the source said, have arrived in the Damascus region and in the coastal province of Latakia. The source said the fighters are expected to spearhead an effort to seize areas of Idlib province, where the regime has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of a rebel-jihadi coalition. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander...

Foreign fighters who claim allegiance to Islamic State are gathering dozens of recruits in eastern Afghanistan, luring would-be jihadis with generous resources and the group’s powerful brand, according to a Taliban fighter who has met several of their commanders. The rapid and dramatic victories clocked up by Isis in Iraq, Syria and Libya have attracted some young men with specific grievances against government or foreign forces, who simply want the strongest possible allies. Others seem drawn by the novelty of an upstart force, the Taliban veteran said, or by the apparently deep pockets of a group that boasts laptops, benevolent...

Many of his foreign fighters come from Afghanistan -- men like Murad, who is now being held in Aleppo as a prisoner-of-war... All he had wanted was an Iranian residence permit, he says... he found himself fighting as a mercenary in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar Assad regime... When a violent explosion caused the house he was in to collapse, he found himself thinking about his daughters, he says. "I screamed and thought I was suffocating. And then, everything around me was quiet." Men arrived and pulled Murad, who was still screaming, out of the...

Iran is offering thousands of dollars to Shia mercenaries from Afghanistan and Pakistan to join the fight to keep President Assad of Syria in power. According to Shia community leaders in Kabul, the recruitment drive is co-ordinated by the Iranian embassy in the Afghan capital. It provides visas to “hundreds” of Shia men each month willing to fight in Syria. Online Urdu- language recruitment is also taking place in Pakistan, with fighters offered $3,000 each to join up.

Soon after the military police came looking for the 25-year-old computer engineer at his family's home, he fled Syria. He bribed a security officer to briefly remove his name from the list of men wanted for mandatory military service and paid a taxi driver $1,000 to drive him across the border into Lebanon. Like many young men living in government-controlled parts of Syria, he had been putting off conscription by paying $2,000 a year, hoping to avoid becoming cannon fodder for a military that has been hemorrhaging soldiers, either by death or defection, after more than four years of war......

Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, promising a monthly salary and residence permits in exchange for what it claims to be a sacred endeavour to save Shia shrines in Damascus. The Fatemioun military division of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Syria is now the second largest foreign military contingent fighting in support of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, after the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. ***snip*** Iran is also accepting Afghans below the age of 18 provided they have written permission from their parents, the Guardian has learned. At least one 16-year-old Iran-based Afghan refugee was killed in...

Where Is Assad Getting His Fighters From? (It's Not Just Lebanon and Iraq) Colin P. ClarkePhillip Smyth January 2, 2018 In early December, senior Trump administration officials suggested that approximately 80 percent of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s defense against insurgents in the country’s ongoing civil war is being provided by forces imported from outside of the country. The lion’s share of these fighters is being trained and equipped by Iran, the Assad regime’s most ardent supporter. Interestingly, however, these foreign fighters, almost of all which are Shia Muslims, are not merely comprised of Lebanese and Iraqis, but include significant numbers...

Too poor to even buy pens and notebooks for school, Mehdi left his home in Afghanistan soon after his 17th birthday and headed to Iran, hoping to make his way to Europe and find work. Instead, Mehdi ended up fighting in Syria’s civil war, a conflict he had nothing to do with, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from home. He was one of tens of thousands of Afghans recruited, paid and trained by Iran to fight in support of Tehran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. There, he found himself thrown into one of the war’s bloodiest front lines, surrounded by the...