Iranian Proxy Militia Opens New Recruitment Center in Aleppo, Syria

The head of the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba visits areas near Aleppo in 2018 (Tasnim)
The head of the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba visits areas near Aleppo in 2018 (Tasnim)
TT
20

Iranian Proxy Militia Opens New Recruitment Center in Aleppo, Syria

The head of the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba visits areas near Aleppo in 2018 (Tasnim)
The head of the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba visits areas near Aleppo in 2018 (Tasnim)

Syrian opposition media outlets are reporting that the Iranian proxy militia, Kataib al-Imam Ali, has opened a new recruitment center at the heart of the regime-run northern city of Aleppo.

Establishing the drafting center took place with consent from the Syrian regime, said local sources.

Javad al-Ghaffari, a prominent Iranian leader who is based in Aleppo, had met with officials at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Damascus to discuss and approve the operation.

All those willing to join the militia, including army defectors and dodgers of compulsory military service, will be accepted, sources predicted. Regime forces will drop their pursuit of anyone drafted into the Iranian militia, even if they are ex-soldiers wanted for decamping or citizens accused of draft evasion.

For Syrian youth living under dire security and economic circumstances, the offer is very tempting.

Syria's opposition Eye of Euphrates news network published a report revealing the details of the terms and conditions involving registration in Kataib al-Imam Ali.

According to the report, enrolled fighters will receive a monthly salary of $200 if they were married, and $150 if they were single.

They will be deployed to outposts near their home addresses and have to log in 20 days of service each month.

Iran has sought strengthening the presence of its proxies in Syria against the backdrop of a Russian orientation to downsize the role played by Iran-backed militias in war-torn country.

It is worth noting that Iran has trained about 70,000 fighters that formed 128 regiments in Syria.

Russia, after intervening in Syria in 2015, sought to weaken Iran-aligned guerrillas by reinforcing regime forces and forming army divisions for local volunteers.

Iran, however, pushed forward with its recruitment agenda in Syria, forming militias that included foreign mercenaries, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and fighters from the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.



Harvard Rejects Trump Demands, Gets Hit by $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze 

A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
TT
20

Harvard Rejects Trump Demands, Gets Hit by $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze 

A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)

Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist. Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.

The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.

On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism accused America's oldest university of having a "troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges - that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."

The exchange escalates the high-stakes dispute between the Trump administration and some of the world's richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.

The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing the institutions to make policy changes and citing what it says is a failure to fight antisemitism on campus.

Deportation proceedings have begun against some detained foreign students who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been canceled.

Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter on Monday that demands made by the Department of Education last week would allow the federal government "to control the Harvard community" and threaten the school's "values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge."

"No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," Garber wrote.

The issue of antisemitism on campus erupted before Trump took office for his second term, following pro-Palestinian student protests last year at several universities following the 2023 Hamas attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement on Monday that Trump was "working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked antisemitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard's support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence."

In a letter on Friday, the education department stated that Harvard had "failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment."

The department demanded that Harvard, work to reduce the influence of faculty, staff and students who are "more committed to activism than scholarship" and have an external panel audit the faculty and students of each department to ensure "viewpoint diversity."

The letter also stated that Harvard, by this August, must only hire faculty and admit students based on merit and cease all preferences based on race, color or national origin. The university must also screen international students "to prevent admitting students hostile to American values" and report to federal immigration authorities foreign students who violate conduct rules.

Last week, a group of Harvard professors sued to block the Trump administration's review of nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to the school.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering forcing fellow Ivy League school Columbia into a consent decree that would legally bind the school to follow federal guidelines in how it combats antisemitism.

Some Columbia professors, like those at Harvard, have sued the federal government in response. The government has suspended $400 million in federal funding and grants to Columbia.

Harvard President Garber said the federal government's demands that it "audit" the viewpoints of its students, faculty and staff to ferret out left-wing thinkers generally opposed to the Trump administration clearly violated the university's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

"The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Garber wrote.

He added that while Harvard is taking steps to address antisemitism on campus, "these ends will not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate."

Harvard agreed in January to provide additional protections for Jewish students under a settlement resolving two lawsuits accusing the Ivy League school of becoming a hotbed of antisemitism.

To ease any funding crunch created by any cutoff in federal funding, Harvard is working to borrow $750 million from Wall Street.