Raftan, Raftan: How young Afghans from Herat end up in the Syrian war Author : S Reza Kazemi Published: 14 June 2016 Downloaded: 14 June 2016 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-admin/post.php Much has been reported about how Afghan men, mostly young Shias, are being incentivised or coerced by Iran into fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria. There has been little study, however, of how exactly they end up in Syria. Said Reza Kazemi (*) has been tracking a 22 year-old Shia Afghan called Musa and discovered a story of going to fight in Syria that is far more complex. Musa’s case highlights how young men, failing to be integrated into their local communities, are becoming more connected to the outside world. It also shows how such dislocated youths can believe that by fighting in Syria they can become men. This dispatch follows previous fieldwork and AAN publications by Said Reza Kazemi on the problematic behaviour of young people in Herat. The names of people and places in this dispatch have been changed or withheld at the request of interviewees. It was a pleasant spring afternoon in a shahrak, or informal settlement, on the tree-clad outskirts of Herat city on 3 April 2016 when 21-year-old Jawid received a message from his close friend Musa on his Chinese-made smartphone while chatting to this author. After the ritual of greetings and catching up, Musa and Jawideengaged in what turned out to be a serious conversation: Musa [online from Tehran, Iran]: Forgive me [halal konen] but I’m no longer going to be around. 1 / 12 Jawid [online from Herat, Afghanistan]: What do you mean? Where will you be? M: Don’t tell anyone: I’ll be in Syria. J: Why? M: Just going there. J: I don’t know what to say. As you wish… But I beg you: don’t go. M: Isn’t it good if I become a shahid [a martyr]? J: You could have continued your schooling and taken your kankur [university entrance test] here. At least you could have tried to get into university here. You could have gone there [to Syria] if you hadn’t succeed with kankur. Or you could have eventually found some work here. So many people go on living here. Of course, it’s good to become a shahid. Not everyone can become a shahid. Of course, I can’t tell you what to do and I can’t stop you going either. M: That [continuing school] was certainly possible, Jawid. My problem comes from another place, and I can’t talk about it. J: What problem? M: The problem lies in my heart. J: Because of your dad? M: No. J: What problem do you have with your heart? M: Leave it. Bye for now. J: Well, you must do whatever feels right for you. M: You know, Jawid, we all die. It has nothing to do with going to Syria. We die wherever we are, once our ’ajal [final hour] comes. J: Are you serious about your decision? M: Yes. J: Are your mum and dad aware of it? 2 / 12 M: No. J: Nobody’s aware of it! Why don’t you talk to your mum and dad about it? Tell them, or it’ll be very sad for them. M: I’m going tomorrow. To Yazd [the centre of Iran’s Yazd province, around 270 km southeast of Isfahan], for training. One month of training in Iran and two months of fighting in Syria. Just pray that all will be fine for me at the end. This conversation between the two young Afghans both reveals and conceals a number of issues. To understand it, it needs to be placed in its context. It highlights, for example, the growing awareness of the outside world among segments of Afghanistan’s younger population, their increased connectivity to worlds both virtual and real and their increasing mobility, both locally and abroad. Following Musa intermittently over the last three years (see previous research here), the author has been amazed at how fascinated Musa has always been with the connectivity provided to him by information and communication technologies, primarily via mobile phone and the Internet. The socioeconomic circumstances of both Musa’s family and the 8,000 or so inhabitants of his shahrak (a Dari diminutive of shahr, city) are generally low. Most of the residents – where Musa has spent most of his life and which is inhabited mostly by Shia Hazaras and Sayyeds – are daily-wage labourers employed in piecemeal construction work. Musa’s father is a local shopkeeper. Youths like Musa have, nevertheless, managed to purchase Chinese-made smartphones and stay connected via the Internet (see previous AAN research on the growth of new media in Afghanistan here). Many of these young people put pressure on their parents to buy them smartphones. Like many of his peers, Musa spends much of his time on his phone, either messaging his friends in Afghanistan and abroad, or checking Facebook and other social networking websites. He watches video clips, listens to music and generally surfs the net. It is this connectivity that has made young people like Musa aware of regional and global developments, such as the war in Syria and, more importantly, how to take part in it. However, their use of information and communication technologies continues to be largely uncritical, partly because of the generally low standards of education and upbringing in society (home, school and the broader community). However, even in countries with much higher standards of education and upbringing, young people have been radicalised through the media and joined the Syrian conflict. (1) Therefore, there is more to youth radicalisation than the use of information and communication technologies. In Musa’s case, he was not radicalised, but his use of such technologies made him increasingly aware about developments outside Afghanistan, including how other young men were fighting in Syria. The failure of local Afghan communities to integrate their youths Musa’s connectivity to the outside world eventually led to his desire to travel abroad. His sense 3 / 12 of dislocation did not happen overnight, however; it took a while for Musa to gradually become alienated from his local community in the shahrak, particularly from his school and his family. It began with a life-changing incident at school. The shahrak where Musa has lived most of his life has one public school, and two private schools which compete with each other to attract fee- paying students. Musa used to attend one of these private schools, but was expelled. He came to blows with one of his teachers, following a reprimand for failing to do his homework, which had suffered increasingly due to time spent with his friends late into the night, and on his smartphone. Despite his father’s pleas, the school stood by their decision and Musa lost a year of studies. In the following academic year, 2014-15, Musa attended a public school outside the shahrak in downtown Herat. He dropped out, however, while in his last year. Musa’s father, who has four children (two girls aged 24 and 20 and two boys aged 22 and 5), then tried to get Musa involved in life in their local community, but these efforts were also in vain. He tried to engage Musa in the small grocery shop he had been running in the locality for over a decade. Musa was, however, not interested in helping his father there or in a subsequent shop his father wanted to set up for him to run. Musa’s father, relatives and some of his school friends, including Jawid, then tried to draw Musa into one of the few local educational centres that have been providing, among other things, English language and computer literacy courses. Musa attended an English language course for a short while, but soon dropped out. His father’s last move was to draw Musa into local life through marriage, but this effort backfired. He had gone to a neighbour’s home, asking their daughter – a girl Musa had come to appreciate – for his son. As the author later found out through female relatives, the girl had previously turned Musa down. One reason was that the girl, who studies medicine at Herat University, rejected Musa because he did not have higher education. Furthermore, marriage is an expensive and complicated process of traditions and rituals, making it difficult for parents to settle their restless sons. In fact, many young Afghan men whose parents are not financially secure see migration abroad (such as Iran, Europe or Australia) as a way to find the money for getting settled in life. (2) In Musa’s case, his father had saved and put aside the necessary money, but his son had already been turned down by the girl he loved – one of the reasons for him wanting to pursue a different life path. Musa’s father eventually learned all this from his wife. The failure of Afghan communities to integrate their young people needs to be placed in a larger historical and cultural context. Figures of authority in a community – parents, educational leaders, religious figures, etc – face a new generation of young men (and women) who often do not share their historical, social or cultural experiences. Most parents in the shahrak have lived most of their lives in Afghanistan’s central highlands region, as well as in intermittent migration in neighbouring countries, such as Iran and Pakistan, with far less connectivity or mobility than their children today have or can appreciate.