Iran's casualties in Syria: Senior commanders and Afghan militiamen

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Analysis: As Iranian involvement in Syria appears to escalate, Farah al-Zaman Shawki tallies reports of Iranian casualties from Tehran's news outlets over the past two years.

Since the start of the Syrian war, military and political officials in Tehran tried to maintain that Iranian involvement in Syria was restricted to advisers assisting regime forces in their war against "terrorism".

However, Iranian media, including official outlets, would gradually reveal the presence of Iranian and Afghan-Iranian "volunteers fighting to defend religious shrines" in Syria and fending off "terrorists".

Iran rarely publishes figures on its casualties in Syria. 

However, in late June, the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, said 400 Iranian nationals had been killed in Syria since the start of the conflict there in 2011.

IRNA said 79 of these nationals were buried in the province of Khorasan Razavi in the northeast of the country, as most were Afghan refugees in Iran originally based in the province.

That figure has since risen, based on Iranian acknowledgments of recent casualties, such as Brigadier Generals Farshad Hassounizadeh and Hamid Mokhtarband, both Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders recently killed in action in Syria.

Iran's casualties, which may be indicative of the formation of its troop deployment in Syria, mainly consist of IRGC commanders, who take part in planning and advising on major operations; and individuals guarding Shia Muslim religious shrines in Syria - primarily Afghan-Iranians from the Fatemion Brigade. 

However, things could now be changing, with recent reports suggesting hundreds of Iranian soldiers are deploying in Syria.

The latest high-profile Iranian casualty was General Hossein Hamadani from the IRGC. His funeral was held in Tehran on October 11, before he was taken to be buried in his birthplace of Hamedan, in western Iran.

Hamedani was a senior commander, according to official statements made by Mohsen Rezai, secretary of the Expediency Council and a former commander of the IRGC.

Hamedani was credited with helping create the pro-regime militia National Defence Forces (NDF), which comprises thousands of Syrian fighters, modelled after Lebanese militant group Hizballah.

Before the recent high-level casualties, Iran had also lost General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Syrian province of Quneitra in early 2015, along with seven Hizballah fighters including Jihad Mughniyeh, son of late Hizballah commander Imad Mughniyeh.

In June, Iran buried a lieutenant named Hamed Jovani, who died after a 40-day coma following injuries sustained in Latakia. 

Iranian advisers, regulars, Afghan fighters and Iraqi Shia militias were brought in to shore up the Assad regime

In the same month, three IRGC soldiers, including a high-ranking officer, were killed in an IED attack along the Damascus-Daraa highway.

In August, Iran officially announced the death of Ahmed Hiyari, leader of the Imam al-Hussein Brigades, in battles near the city of Latakia.

Many other Iranian officers were also killed earlier this year and late last year, with official acknowledgement from various Iranian news outlets. 

Those officers included members of the Iranian Basij force, a state-sponsored paramilitary volunteer militia, who the Fars News Agency said in February were defending holy shrines in Syria.

The Fatemion Brigade has also had many fatalities over the past two years, most notably Major General Ali Reza Tavassoli, the brigade's commander, who died alongside several of his men in battles with al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front near Daraa in March. 

Tavassoli was of Afghan origins, and was close to Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani.

The direct Iranian involvement in Syria, regardless of its previous or current scale, started almost immediately after the start of the conflict. 

Alongside Iranian IRGC advisers and regulars, and Afghan fighters, Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militias were also brought in ostensibly to "defend the holy shrines", with a view of shoring up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. 

Israeli colonisation is at the root of the violence

The present "Intifada" is an outcome of the occupation and the expanded Jewish colonisation.

By Ilan Pappe

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In the midst of what has become known in Israel as the "knifers' Intifada", an unusual scene unfolded in Ramat Gan, where many of the residents are Iraqi Jews. A small slender woman was protecting a man lying on the ground who was being pursued by a mob of 40 people, including a few soldiers, who wanted to lynch him.

While lying on the ground, pepper gas was sprayed into his eyes at close range. He managed to whisper to his guardian angel: "I am a Jew." When the mob finally got the message, he was left alone.

He was chased because almost all the Iraqi Jews look like Palestinians; in fact, most of us Jews in Israel look like Palestinians. The only Jews who are "protected" are the Mizrahi Orthodox Jews who don the same clothes their Ashkenazi predecessors wore in 17th-century Europe, dismissing their traditional "Arab" dress.

Invisible people

Inside story - Is a third Palestinian Intifada imminent?

This attack was not the only one. Other Arab Jews have been mistaken for Palestinians. Being considered an Arab in Israel, even based on looks, means you are part of the invisible, disempowered and dispensable natives.

Such an attitude is not unique in history. Most settler colonial societies adopted this attitude towards the natives: Natives, for settler-colonial societies, are an obstacle to be removed along with the stones in the fields, the mosquitoes in the swamps, and in the case of early Zionism, with the less fit - physically and culturally - Jews.

After the Holocaust, Zionism could not afford to be that choosy any more.

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Also read: It's time to challenge the status quo in Palestine

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When one analyses the origins of the present Intifada, one can rightly point to the occupation and the expanded Jewish colonisation.

But the desperation that has produced the current unrest isn't a direct outcome of the 1967 colonisation, but rather, of nearly 100 years of invisibility, dehumanisation and potential destruction of the Palestinian people, wherever they are.

How deeply this denial of the humanity of the natives of Palestine is rooted in today's Israeli political discourse could be seen in the two main speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the opposition, Yitzhak Herzog, given on Tuesday at the Knesset.

It was the Israeli policy and actions against Al-Aqsa that ignited the present wave of protests and individual attacks. But it was triggered by a century-long atrocity: the incremental culturecide of Palestine.

Netanyahu explained very well why the Palestinian desperation will produce more and more Intifadas in the future and why Israel's international delegitimisation will increase exponentially.

He described 100 years of colonisation as a proud project that for no good reason, other than Islamic incitement, was resisted by the native people of Palestine.

The message to the Palestinians was clear: Accept your fate as invisible, citizen-less inmates of the biggest prison on earth in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and as a community under a severe apartheid regime, and we can all live in peace. Any attempt to reject this reality is terrorism of the worst kind and will be dealt with accordingly.

Within this narrative, if his speechwriter was attempting to calm down worries in the Muslim world about the fate of al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), the opposite message came through. Much of his speech about al-Haram al-Sharif was a history lesson on why the place belongs to the Jewish people.

And although he ended this section with a promise not to change the status quo, the presence of the leaders of a party strongly believing in the need to build a third temple there was hardly reassuring.

'Never together'

In his speech, Herzog, the leader of the liberal Zionist opposition, manifested the dehumanisation of the Palestinians in a different way. His nightmare, he stressed repeatedly, was a country where Jews and Palestinians would live together.

Therefore, separation, ghettoisation, and enclaves are the best solution, even if it means shrinking a bit of greater Israel. "We are here, and they are there," he repeated Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres' famous slogan from the late 1990s.

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Also read: The rise of the Oslo generation

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Haaretz's liberal Zionist journalist, Barak Ravid, repeated the horror of liberal Zionists: If you have a binational state, stabbings will be a daily occurrence, he warned. The idea that a liberated Israel/Palestine will be a democracy for all has never been on the liberal Zionist agenda.

This wish not to share life with anything Arab is an attitude felt by every Palestinian on a daily basis. More than a century of colonisation and nothing has changed in the complete denial of the native Palestinians' humanity or their right to the place.

It was Israeli policy and actions against Al-Aqsa Mosque that ignited the present wave of protests and individual attacks. But it was triggered by a century-long atrocity: the incremental culturecide of Palestine.

The Western world was horrified by the destruction of ancient cultural gems by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Israeli destruction and wiping out of the Islamic heritage of Palestine was far more extensive and significant. Hardly one mosque remained intact after the Nakba, and many of those remaining were turned into restaurants, discotheques, and farms.

The Palestinians' attempt to revive their theatrical and literary heritage is considered by Israel as a commemoration of the Nakba, and is outlawed if undertaken by anybody who relies on governmental funding.

What we see - and will continue to see - in Palestine is the existential struggle of the native people of a country still under threat of destruction.

Ilan Pappe is the director of the European Center of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He has published 15 books on the Middle East and on the Palestine Question.

Emad Hajjaj's Cartoon: Russia's Terrorism Against the Syrian People

إيران تعلن مقتل قائد لقوات الباسيج بسوريا

نادر حميد (يمين) القيادي بقوات التعبئة الإيرانية قتل بمدينة القنيطرة السورية (الجزيرة)
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قتل القائد في قوات الباسيج الإيرانية نادر حميد متأثرا بإصابته قبل أيام في اشتباكات بسوريا مع المعارضة السورية المسلحة، في ظل تزايد أعداد المقاتلين الإيرانيين إلى جانب نظام الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد.

وأفادت وكالة أنباء فارس الإيرانية بوفاة حميد المسؤول في قوات الباسيج (التابعة للحرس الثوري الإيراني)، بعد إصابته قبل أيام في اشتباكات مع المعارضة السورية المسلحة في مدينة القنيطرة السورية.

وأضافت الوكالة أن حميد كان يقوم بدور تنسيقي بين قوات الدفاع الوطني في مواجهة ما أسمته عصابات الإرهاب وجماعات التكفيريين، وأن مراسم التشييع ستجري في محافظة خوزستان (جنوب غربي البلاد) بعد وصول جثمانه من سوريا.

وقد أشار تقرير صادر عن معهد واشنطن إلى مقتل 113 إيرانيا في الحرب السورية، من أبرزهم علي أصغري ومهدي خراساني، وهما عضوان في فيلق القدس وأول إيرانييْن أعلن مقتلهما بدمشق في يناير/كانون الثاني 2013.

كما قتل الجنرال حسام خوش نويس -الملقب بحسن شاطري- في كمين على طريق دمشق الزبداني في فبراير/شباط 2013.

وفي عام 2014، لقي الجنرال حسين بادبا مصرعه بمدينة درعا، كما قتل الجنرالان جبار دريساوي وأصفر شيردل بحلب.

كما قتل الجنرال عباس عبد الله قائد كتيبة في فيلق عاشوراء، وكذلك الجنرال علي مرادي، بمدينة درعا في فبراير/شباط 2015.

وقبل نحو أسبوعين، قتل القيادي في الحرس الثوري حسين همداني في حلب، وكان مسؤولا عن العمليات التي ينفذها لواءا الفاطميين والزينبيين اللذان أرسلتهما إيران لمساندة الأسد، فضلا عن عمليات حزب الله اللبناني في سوريا، كما نقلت ذلك وكالة الأناضول.

وقد أفادت مصادر لرويترز مطلع الشهر الجاري بأن مئات الجنود الإيرانيين وصلوا منذ أواخر سبتمبر/أيلول الماضي للمشاركة في هجوم بري كبير في غرب وشمال غرب سوريا.

وفي وقت سابق، نقلت وكالة أسوشيتد برس عن مسؤول إقليمي أن هناك حاليا 1500 عنصر من الحرس الثوري الإيراني في سوريا، لكن إيران تنفي وجود أي قوات عسكرية لها في سوريا سوى من تصفهم بالمستشارين.

في العمق- خيارات الثورة السورية وداعميها بعد التدخل الروسي

NO LONGER THE GREAT SATAN: إيران تمنع حرق العلم الأمريكي في المظاهرات

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لندن ـ «القدس العربي» من محمد المذحجي: أصدر المجلس التنسيقي للدعوة الإسلامية الإيراني توجيهاً يمنع حرق العلم الأمريكي خلال مسيرة «اليوم الوطني لمقارعة الاستكبار العالمي» التي تقام سنوياً في 4 تشرين الثاني / نوفمبر في جميع أنحاء إيران، خلافاً لما تعود عليه منطمو المظاهرات السنوية ضد «قوى الاستكبار العالمي». 
وأفاد موقع «كلمة» المقرب من أحد كبار قادة الإصلاحيين الإيراني الذي يقبع تحت الإقامة الجبرية في طهران، مير حسين موسوي، نقلاً عن وكالة إسنا للأنباء الإيرانية، أن المجلس التنسيقي للدعوة الإسلامية الإيراني أبلغ ممثليه في جميع أنحاء إيران بأنه لن يحرق علم أمريكا خلال مسيرة «اليوم الوطني لمقارعة الاستكبار العالمي» للعام الحالي.
وأكد المجلس التنسيقي للدعوة الإسلامية الإيراني أن الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية تعتبر دولة رسمية، لهذا السبب وخلال مسيرة العام الحالي يتم حرق علم إسرائيل فقط. [THIS TOO WILL STOP SOON]

ويترأس المجلس التنسيقي للدعوة الإسلامية الإيراني منذ بداية الثورة الإيرانية، آية الله أحمد جنتي، وهو رئيس مجلس صيانة الدستور ومن كبار صنّاع القرار الإيراني.
وتتم إقامة جميع المراسم الثورية والمناسبات الخاصة التي تتعلق بالنظام الإيراني مثل ذكرى انتصار ثورة 1979 وغيرها من مراسم مماثلة، من قبل المجلس التنسيقي للدعوة الإسلامية الإيراني.

الواقع العربي- تراجع التفاعل العربي مع قضية الأقصى

المعارضة تدمر آليات للنظام بريف حلب

إعلام المعارضة السورية يستخدم تقنية 360 درجة للتصوير

DNA- نصرالله.. إسرائيل والتكفيريين- 19/10/2018

Israel-Palestine: As Stabbings, Shootings Kill Dozens, Endless Occupation Fuels Vengeful Resistance

Democracy Now!

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"The death toll from violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories has increased with new Palestinian stabbing attacks and an intensified Israeli crackdown. On Sunday, an attacker identified as a 21-year-old Arab citizen of Israel knifed an Israeli soldier to death and then opened fire at a bus station in Beersheba, wounding 10 people. The attacker was killed. In an apparent case of racial profiling, a mob of soldiers and bystanders then shot and beat an Eritrean man to death, mistakenly thinking he was a second assailant. After sealing off East Jerusalem neighborhoods last week, Israel is widening its crackdown on Arab residents and continuing military operations across the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations says last week was the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel in 10 years, raising concerns "of excessive use of force, and violations of the right to life and security of the person." We are joined by two guests: Jamil Dakwar, a Palestinian human rights lawyer with Israeli citizenship, and Nathan Thrall, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group whose new article for The New York Times is "Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem."..."

Low turnout as Egyptians shun elections designed to shore up Sisi

In absence of opposition parties, experts say the result is a foregone conclusion but a low turnout suggests that the strongman president is losing popularity

The Guardian

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Egyptian voters appear to have shunned the first phase of a parliamentary election that president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had hailed as a milestone on the road to democracy but which his critics have called a sham.

Polling stations visited by Reuters correspondents on Sunday pointed to a turnout of around 10%, in sharp contrast to the long lines that formed in the 2012 election. A low turnout suggests that Sisi, who has enjoyed cult-like adulation, is losing popularity.

'The Egyptian government is waging a war on civil society'

 

Read more

“It’s not going to matter. It’s just for show, to show that we are a democracy, and we have elections,” said Ahmed Mostafa, 25, who works in a lab.

The vote for the 596-member parliament will be held in two phases ending on 2 December, with Egyptians abroad casting their votes for the first round from Saturday.

But with an absence of opposition parties – such as the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, which has faced a deadly government crackdown overseen by Sisi – the poll has not inspired the enthusiasm witnessed for Egypt’s first democratic elections in 2011.

Experts say the outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion and only voter turnout will be a gauge of popularity for Sisi, who has enjoyed cult-like status since he ousted his predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Most of the more than 5,000 candidates in the polls support Sisi and are expected to dominate parliament.

Hazem Hosny, political science professor at Cairo University said: “This parliament will be a parliament of the president. It’s really a parliament … to keep things as they are, to give an image of democracy.”

Many Egyptians, tired of political turmoil since veteran leader Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, support Sisi, who has vowed to revive an ailing economy and restore stability.

Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected civilian leader, was ousted by then army chief Sisi on 3 July 2013, after mass street protests against his divisive year-long rule.

The ensuing government crackdown overseen by Sisi targeting Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement left hundreds dead and thousands jailed.

Hundreds more, including Morsi, have been sentenced to death after speedy trials, which the UN denounced as “unprecedented in recent history”.

Sisi, meanwhile, won a presidential election in 2014.

Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in jihadi attacks since the crackdown on Islamists began, with the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State group leading a deadly insurgency in North Sinai.

Sisi enjoys support from western countries who have signed major arms deals with Cairo to back him in the fight against jihadists.

“Sisi is our soul … without him we would have been migrants like those from other countries around us,” said Buthaina Shehata after she cast her vote at a Cairo polling booth.

The constitution empowers parliament to move a no-confidence motion against the president and gives lawmakers 15 days to review all presidential decrees.

But experts say the ability of lawmakers might be close to zero given the absence of any real opposition.

It had been the main opposition force for decades, fielding candidates in parliamentary elections under Mubarak despite an official ban.The Brotherhood dominated the last assembly but is now banned after being blacklisted as a “terrorist organisation,” while leftist and secular movements that led the 2011 uprising are boycotting the election or lacking representation in the polls.

Its party took 44% of seats in the first free democratic elections following Mubarak downfall in 2011.

That parliament was dissolved in June 2012, but the Brotherhood’s popularity shone through days later when Morsi, a civilian, was elected, putting an end to six decades of presidents coming from military ranks.

As Egyptians abroad started casting their ballots on Saturday, Sisi appeared on television calling on citizens to vote.

“Celebrate the choice of representatives and make the right choice,” he said.

“I am expecting Egyptian youth to be the driving force in this celebration of democracy.”

Of the 596 lawmakers being elected, 448 will be voted in as independents, 120 on party lists, and 28 will be presidential appointees.

The main coalition is the pro-Sisi For the Love of Egypt, which includes leading businessmen and former members of Mubarak’s National Democratic party. It aims to win two-thirds of the seats.

The openly pro-Sisi Salafist Al-Nur party, which backed the ousting of Morsi , is the only Islamist party standing.

About 55 million voters are eligible to cast their votes in the two-stage election across the country’s 27 provinces, with polling in the first stage to be held over two days.

Any run-off in the first phase will be contested on 27-28 October. The second phase starts on 21 November.

إسقاط طائرة استطلاع روسية يريف حلب

حديث الثورة- الجيش الحر.. صعود بعد كمون

ودة الجيش الحر إلى الواجهة بسوريا

ما وراء الخبر- دعوة الأمم المتحدة للحوار في اليمن

مقتل 4 مسعفين بغارة روسية على ريف حمص

Dozens of regime troops killed south of Syria's Aleppo

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Armed opposition groups in south of Syria’s Aleppo city on Sunday killed dozens of troops loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and destroyed a number of regime vehicles, according to local sources.

The sources told Anadolu Agency that regime forces backed by Russian airpower had attacked several areas south of Aleppo, prompting clashes with opposition forces in which some 35 regime troops were killed and eight regime vehicles - including five tanks - were destroyed.

“Opposition forces responded to the regime’s attack with missiles and mortar fire, inflicting heavy losses on regime forces in spite of Russian air support,” one local source toldAnadolu Agency.

The same sources asserted that ongoing clashes had forced residents of the villages of Alhader and Aleis, both of which are located south of Aleppo, to flee their homes fearing Russian aerial bombardments.

They also noted that numerous civilians had been injured due to Russian bombardments of the villages of Marj and Alzorba.

Russia began carrying out airstrikes in Syria on September 30. According to the Kremlin, the strikes are aimed at supporting the Assad regime - an ally of Russia’s - against the Daesh militant group, which remains in control of broad swathes of the war-torn country.

Turkey and several western countries, for their part, accuse Russia of targeting moderate groups in Syria opposed to Assad, several of which are supported by Ankara and Washington.

At least 250,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the Syria conflict in 2011, according to UN figures, with 7.6 million internally displaced and over four million having fled to nearby countries.

A GREAT CARTOON

شباب الجامعات عنصر رئيسي في احتجاجات فلسطين