Pakistan Bans Iran-Backed Zainebiyoun Brigade Amid Regional Turmoil

Executive Summary:

• Pakistan banned the Iran-backed Zainebiyoun Brigade on April 11, 2024, designating them as a terrorist group. The move is believed to be an effort to crack down on Iranian recruitment of disaffected Pakistani Shia, who are being used to fight in Iran’s proxy wars across the Middle East.
• Individuals believed to be affiliated with the Zainebiyoun Brigade have also attempted to carry out attacks on major Pakistani figures in the past, though this has been on a fairly small scale.

On April 11, 2024, the Pakistani government banned the Iran-backed Zainebiyoun Brigade and designated them a terrorist group. The development came a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that Israel “must be punished and will be punished” in response to an April 1 attack on Iran’s consulate building in Damascus. The Israeli strike destroyed the building and killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals. Pakistani officials banned the Zainebiyoun Brigade out of fears that its fighters could be used by Iran to retaliate against Israeli targets (Arab News Pakistan, April 12, 2024). In addition, Islamabad was concerned that the Zainebiyoun Brigade could become active in Pakistan, which would further complicate the country’s security challenges. Previously, Pakistan had banned two other Iran-supported Shia militant groups, Ansar-ul-Hussain, and its offshoot, Khatam-ul-Anbia, in 2016 and 2020, respectively. In both cases, these groups were proscribed for recruiting Pakistani Shia men to fight in Syria (Arab News Pakistan, April 14, 2024). While some at the time expressed the belief that Pakistan was siding with the pro-Israel West, Islamabad’s decision must be understood within the framework of its regional strategic competition with Iran.

Recruitment from Pakistan

The Zainebiyoun Brigade, also known as “Hezbollah Pakistan,” has recruited thousands of Shia men across Shia-populated areas in Pakistan to fight in Iran’s proxy wars in the Middle East. In a talk show on Pakistan’s GTV News, former senator Faisal Raza Abidi stated that “out of the 40,000 fighters from Hezbollah and [the] Zainebiyoun Brigade who have reached Jerusalem, 233 are Pakistani fighters from areas such as Parachinar [in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province]” (MinuteMirror, April 12, 2024). The Zainebiyoun Brigade has also recruited from other areas in Pakistan, such as Karachi, Gilgit, and Quetta (The Arab Weekly, September 16, 2018). Beyond ideology, Iran has offered the fighters a financial incentive in the form of a monthly salary of $500–700, nearly half of what most Pakistanis earn in a year (Arab News Pakistan, April 14, 2024; World Population Review, accessed March 15).

In a six-month period in 2018, the Zainebiyoun Brigade recruited more than 1,600 Pakistani Shia fighters. Moreover, a Pakistani intelligence report published in 2017 revealed that 4,000 Shia pilgrims who went to Iran between November 2016 and June 2017 never returned to Pakistan. Iran is known to have used Shia pilgrimages as a cover for recruiting Shia fighters from Pakistan, and as a result, these 4,000 individuals were suspected of having joined the Zainebiyoun Brigade (Pakistan Forward, October 5, 2018). Over the years, this has led Islamabad to crack down on returning Shia pilgrims from Iran and Iraq.

Trouble for Pakistan

Pakistani officials have always had concerns about Shia extremism and especially the possibility of Iran’s Islamic Revolution being exported to Pakistan. Islamabad’s fears are justified by the activities of the militants and charity organizations linked to the Zainebiyoun Brigade in Pakistan. For instance, the Quetta-based Noor Foundation has been cited by Pakistan’s security forces as a front from which Iran conducted a number of subversive activities in Pakistan. Investigations revealed links between the Noor Foundation and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), alleging that the members of the Noor Foundation worked for the IRGC under the guise of charity work. The Noor Foundation had also been instrumental in promoting disaffection among Pakistani Shias, aiding the recruitment of fighters from these communities into the Zainebiyoun Brigade (Pakistan Forward, May 2, 2018).

Fighters linked with the Zainebiyoun Brigade have carried out operations in Pakistan and have been subsequently arrested. After Iran’s airstrikes on Pakistan and the subsequent retaliation from Pakistan in January 2024, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) arrested a Zainebiyoun Brigade militant, Syed Mohammad Mehdi, who was suspected of having tried to assassinate a top Pakistani cleric, Mufti Taqi Usmani, in Karachi in 2019. Usmani, a leading religious scholar and former top court judge in Pakistan, narrowly escaped the assassination attempt (Iran International, January 22, 2024).

The attempt on Usmani was not a one-off event. For instance, in February 2021, the CTD arrested a Zainebiyoun Brigade militant, Syed Zakir Raza, who was on the CTD’s “most wanted” list. Raza had received military training from Iran, was involved in anti-Pakistani activities, and was a close associate of another infamous Zainebiyoun Brigade militant arrested a month before, Abbas Jafri (Business Recorder [Pakistan], February 2, 2021). In December 2020, the CTD arrested two other Zainebiyoun Brigade militants in Karachi in connection with a string of killings over the past six years (Arab News Pakistan, January 28, 2021).

Conclusion

While the banning of the Zainebiyoun Brigade was one of several major incidents that threatened to upend relations between Iran and Pakistan, the move was a rational one for Islamabad. If Zainebiyoun Brigade fighters had targeted Israeli or American targets in the Middle East, Pakistan would have faced tremendous embarrassment and pressure internationally, given the fact that the bulk of Zainebiyoun Brigade militants have come from Pakistan (The Media Line, August 19, 2024). Moreover, further Zainebiyoun Brigade activities in Pakistan could have pitted the Shia population against the Sunni population and triggered a deadly sectarian conflict. This was possible due to the hundreds of trained Zainebiyoun Brigade fighters having reportedly returned to Pakistan over the past several years (TRT World, March 2, 2021). The ban on the Zainebiyoun Brigade may inhibit the group’s operations in Pakistan, but it is unlikely to halt them entirely—the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes referred to as the Pakistani Taliban) continues to pose a threat to Islamabad, despite having been banned in 2008. Alternatively, the Zainebiyoun Brigade may attempt to rebrand itself under another name in the future to circumvent the ban and operate openly once again.