Suriye İç Savaşı’nda Şii Yabancı Savaşçılar: Savaşçı Devşirme Stratejileri ve İran’ın Bölgesel Rolü

Abstract

Ülkenin nükleer programı, bununla ilgili uluslararası çabalar ve yaptırımların etkisi, bu yaptırımların sona ermesinin ekonomik ve politik sonuçları ve bölgede aktif olarak izlediği “vekâlet savaşı” stratejisi nedeniyle İran, uluslararası ilişkilerin gündeminde oldukça önemli bir yer işgal etmektedir. İran'ın yakın coğrafyasını şekillendirmeye yönelik çabaları “vekiller” yoluyla önemli bir ilerleme kaydetmiş ve Suriye İç Savaşı, İran'ın yıllar boyunca biriktirdiği bu “know-how” ı kullandığı en etkili savaş alanlarından biri olmuştur. Bu çalışmada, İran’ın Suriye’deki rejimin otoritesini sağlamak için sınır aşan bir strateji geliştirdiği öne sürülmektedir. Çalışma, bu argümanı temellendirmek adına İran’ın devrim sonrası bölgesel hedefleri ve bu bağlamdaki kilit aktörlerin genel bir tartışmasını sunacaktır. Takiben, Arap Baharı ve Suriye İç Savaşı kapsamında bu bölgesel stratejinin, bazı önemli Şii’i aktörlerin oyuna dahil edilme süreçlerinin çevrimiçi ve çevrimdışı süreçleri göz önünde bulundurarak bir profilleme çalışması üzerinden tartışılacaktır. Böylelikle İran’ın bölgesel stratejisi bağlamında sahaya en etkin biçimde ağırlığını koyduğu alanlardan olan Suriye’de nasıl bir sınır-aşan strateji üzerinden etkin konuma geldiğinin anlaşılması hedeflenmektedir.

Keywords

• İran
• Suriye
• Kudüs Gücü
• Fatimiyyun
• Şi’a
• Yabancı Savaşçılar

Foreign Shiite Fighters in the Syrian Civil War: Actors, Recruitment Strategies and Iran’s Regional Role

Abstract

Due to the country’s nuclear program, international efforts regarding it and the impact of the sanctions, the economic and political consequences of the termination of these sanctions, and the “proxy war” it actively carries out in the region, Iran has been one of the key focal points of international relations. Iran's efforts to shape its immediate geography through by “proxies” have undergone significant progress, and the Syrian Civil War has been one of the most influential battlefields where Iran has used this “know-how” it had accumulated over years. In this study, how Iran devised a transboundary strategy to ensure the regime’s authority in Syria will be discussed. The study, in order to do so, will provide a general discussion of Iran’s post-revolutionary regional ambitions and key actors within this context. After that, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War dimensions of this regional strategy will be discussed by profiling some key foreign Shi’a actors with an eye on their recruitment strategies online and offline. By doing so, how Iran has become an influential actor in the Syria Civil War, as the battlefield where Iranian regional strategy in a transnational pattern is played out quite effectively will be made sense of.

Keywords

• Iran
• Syria
• Quds Force
• Fatemiyoun
• Shi’a
• Foreign Fighters

References

1. "Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran", WIPO, .
2. “Iranian Forces and Shia Militia in Syria”, BICOM Briefing, March 2018.
3. “Syria: Pro-Government Paramilitary Forces”, The Carter Center, 5 November 2013.
4. Alfoneh, Ali (2015), "Shiite Combat Casualties Show the Depth of Iran's Involvement in Syria", The Washington Institute, 3 August 2015.
5. Alfoneh, Ali (2017), "Shia Afghan Fighters in Syria", Syrian Voices, 19 April 2017.
6. Alfoneh, Ali (2018), "Tehran’s Shia Foreign Legions", Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 30 January 2018.
7. Blanford, Nicholas (2013), “The Battle for Qusayr: How the Syrian Regime and Hizb Allah Tipped the Balance”, CTC Sentinel 6 (8): 18-22.
8. Bucala, Paul (2017), “Iran's New Way of War in Syria”, Institute for the Study of War, February 2017.

9. Byman, Daniel (2018), “Confronting Iran”, Survival 60(1): 107-128.
10. Clarke, Colin and Smyth, Phillip (2017), “The Implications of Iran’s Expanding Shi`a Foreign Fighter Network”, CTC Sentinel 10 (10): 14-18.
11. Dominic Evans (2013), “Analysis: Hezbollah Takes Syrian Centre-Stage, Yet Remains in Shadows”, Reuters, 18 June 2013.
12. Farzam, Rahimullah & Sarı, İsmail (2017), “Fatimiyyun: İran'ın Afgan Milisleri”, USAD (6): 267-290.
13. Ghaddar, Hanin (2017), “Perceiving the Shia Dimension of Terrorism”, The Georgetown Security Studies Review, Special Issue: What the New Administration Needs to Know About Terrorism and Counterterrorism, 24 February 2017.
14. Heistein, Ari and James West (2015), “Syria’s Other Foreign Fighters: Iran’s Afghan and Pakistani Mercenaries,” National Interest, 20 November 2015.
15. Hinnebusch, Raymond (2015), “Structure over Agency: The Arab Uprising and the Regional Struggle for Power”, The Eastern Mediterranean in Transiton: Multipolarity, Politics and Power, ed. Spyridon N. Litsas, Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate, 2015: 119-132.
16. Joshi, Shashank (2016), “The Views of Non-State Actors” in Understanding Iran’s Role in the Syrian Conflict, ed. Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi and Raffaello Pantucci, RUSI Occasional Paper, August 2016.
17. Lister, Charles and Dominic Nelson (2017), “All the President’s Militias: Assad’s Militiafication of Syria”, Middle East Institute, 14 December 2017.
18. Peterson, S. (2016), “Iran Steps Up Recruitment of Shiite Mercenaries for Syrian War”, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 June 2016.
19. Phillips, Christopher and Morten Valbjørn (2018), “'What is in a Name?': The Role of (Different) Identities in the Multiple Proxy Wars in Syria”, Small Wars & Insurgencies 29 (3): 414-433. Rathore, Shahzeb Ali (2017), “The Saudi-Iran Factor in Pakistan’s Sunni-Shia Conflict”, The Middle East Institute, 30 May 2017.
20. Reuter, Christoph (2014), “Death in Aleppo: A Group of Afghan Fighters in Syria”, Afghanistan Analysts Network, 6 June 2014.
21. Smyth, Phillip (2014(b)), “The Shiite Jihad in Syria and Its Regional Effects”, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus 138.
22. Smyth, Phillip (2014(a)), “Iran's Afghan Shiite Fighters in Syria”, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 3 June 2014.
23. Smyth, Phillip (2015), “Iran's Iraqi Shiite Proxies Increase Their Deployment to Syria”, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2 October 2015.
24. Sullivan, Marisa (2014), “Hezbollah in Syria”, Institute for the Study of War, Middle East Security Report 19, April 2014.
25. Termill, W. Andrew (2015), “Iran's Strategy for Saving Asad”, Middle East Journal 69 (2): 222-236. Worth, Robert F. (2012), “Effort to Rebrand Arab Spring Backfires in Iran”, New York Times, 2 February 2012.
26. Zahid, Farhan (2016), “The Zainabiyoun Brigade: A Pakistani Shiite Militia Amid the Syrian Conflict”, Terrorism Monitor 14 (11): 5-6.