Anti-American Sentiment Fuelling Syrian Conflict from All Sides

It seems that despite literally decades of bloodshed and billions of dollars, America's war in the Middle East has had no success quelling the discord and in fact may have made things worse.

As the fighting in Syria worsens, international responses increase, and subsequently the story of the conflict begins to unravel, it is becoming clearer that conflicts the West thought were concluded some time ago are far from over and are also far from separate.

It has come to light that troops fighting for the Assad regime in Syria are comprised not only of President Assad's security forces, but also Afghan civilians being paid and trained by Iran to fight against Syrian rebel groups. The men are paid between $500 and $1000 U.S dollars a month after being taken to a black site training facility somewhere in Iran.

They are blindfolded and taken to the training centre where they are instructed on fighting tactics by Iranian military, and also provided with moderate to light weaponry. When CNN interviewed two of these such individuals, who opted to keep their identity and location unknown, they confirmed that they had been paid by the Iranian government to join the regime fighters in Syria, as did other residents in the village and surrounding region.

What is most interesting however, were the reasons these men had chosen to risk their lives to fight for a foreign country in the midst of a gruelling war that had already cost the lives of over 190,000 people. “We want to go there for two reasons” stated one of the men involved, “one is to fight against those who are being assisted by Americans in Syria, and secondly Iran pays us to fight in Syria.”. It was not long before the true motivation behind these actions surfaced, and the role of the war in Afghanistan showed itself: “Those who fight against the Assad regime are America's slaves.

That is why we want to fight them and kill them...Before this we used to be part of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but after our disagreements caused tension among us, we left the Taliban and went to Iran.”. Since making a concerted effort to disturb Taliban activity in Afghanistan and reduce the amount of money within the country, which fuels Taliban activities through trade, the desire for finances has grown to desperate proportions.

Though the search for extra funds is a powerful motivator for many of the Afghan fighters, the predominant factor fuelling this rampaging fire is a hatred of America as a direct result of the 2001 war in Afghanistan. Iran, too, is motivated by a desire to maintain the rule of its strongest Middle Eastern ally; Syria, and a desire to see America's power-grip on the region loosened.

The Afghanistan war may be out of the limelight, as is the Iraq war of 2001, but the strongest lesson we can take from these new developments is that each of these conflicts have far reaching ramifications and the conflict continues far beyond the reach of overt physical violence between ruling and rebelling factions.

The cultural scars are left behind, ready to be reopened at a moments notice, and the decision to declare war should be made with this reality in mind.

By Erin Lawson