BAGHDAD: Smiling broadly and clad in military fatigues, young Iraqi Mohammed Imad’s last TikTok post was in a field carved up with heavy vehicle tracks in what appeared to be Ukraine. Smoke was rising behind him.
“Pray for me,” read the caption next to a Russian flag.
That was in May. Months went by without a word, only rumors. Mohammed had been taken hostage, was injured, had the flu or had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike.
Like many Iraqis now fighting in Ukraine, the 24-year-old traveled to Russia without his family’s knowledge to enlist in Russia’s armed forces, his mother Zeinab Jabbar, 54, told AFP.
Like them, he was drawn by promises of money and a Russian passport.
“He went and never came back,” Jabbar said, tears streaming down her face as she clutched a picture of Mohammed in their modest home in Musayab, south of Baghdad.
“We Iraqis have seen so many wars... we have had enough,” she added. “What do we have to do with Russia” and Ukraine, “two countries fighting each other?“
Mohammed was a baby when the US-led invasion of Iraq spawned decades of bloody sectarian violence, and the brutal but short-lived jihadist “caliphate.”
Many young people were called up into the army or joined Shiite paramilitary groups to fight the Daesh group, with others pulled into Syria’s long civil war.
With one in three young people now jobless and the country mired in corruption and mismanagement, AFP found many Iraqis are being lured to fight for Russia by seemingly irresistible offers pushed by influencers on social media.
They include a monthly salary of $2,800 — four times what they could earn in the military at home — and a sign-up fee of up to $20,000 to set them up in life.
A Russian passport, insurance and pension also come as part of the package, they are told, as well as compensation in case of injury.
- TikTok recruiters -
AFP spoke to relatives of four men from impoverished families who traveled to Russia to join its army, three of whom are officially missing. A fourth was returned to his family in a body bag.
We also talked to another who has also donned the Russian uniform and doubles as an online cheerleader and recruiting sergeant.
“Give me an Iraqi soldier and a Russian weapon, and we will liberate the world from Western colonialism,” he declared in one post.
Social media apps like TikTok and Telegram are brimming with people offering help to Iraqis to join Russia’s ranks.
Early in the war, when Moscow was propping up former president Bashar Assad’s rule in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wanted to recruit 16,000 fighters from the Middle East, with around 2,000 regular Syrian troops later reportedly sent to Russia.
The Telegram channels sharing the tempting deals are now targeting a different, younger demographic.
Their administrators offer assistance to other potential Arab recruits from Syria, Egypt, Algeria and beyond.
Similar methods have been used to recruit young men from Central Asia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal, AFP reporters have found, as well as from Cuba.
They even provide a list of important military terms to learn in Russian, including “ammunition is depleted,” “mission accomplished,” “we have casualties” and “suicide drone attack.”
One channel said it also provided assistance to Iraqis transferring money back home.
AFP contacted the phone number shared by the channel. A man responded saying all that was needed was a copy of a passport, an address and phone number.
He would then send an invitation for a visa, and later cover the ticket cost.
- ‘I want my son’ -
But among the enquiries about how to enlist are posts from families searching for missing sons.
Mohammed’s family believes that propaganda on social media persuaded him to travel to Russia to sign up earlier this year.
For weeks Mohammed posted videos on TikTok. In one, AFP geolocated him to the Oryol region, close to the border with Ukraine.
His family thought he was working in the southern Iraqi province of Basra.
But by the time Mohammed posted his last TikTok selfie video on May 12, they knew the truth. His mother Jabbar called him, begging him to return home.
“He told me he is going to war... and asked me to pray for him.” It was the last time she talked to him.
“I want my son... I want to know if he is dead or alive,” Jabbar said.
Mohammed’s sister Faten spends countless hours on social media tracking Iraqis who claim to have joined the Russian army, desperate to find some clue about her brother.
She has been given various accounts of his fate, including one that he just had the flu. But the worst account came from Abbas Hamadullah, a user who goes by the pseudonym Abbas Al-Munaser.
Munaser, 27, is among many Iraqis who share their experiences in the Russian army on TikTok and Telegram and offer help to those who want to enlist.
His posts made him a reference for Mohammed. Munaser told AFP that Mohammed had sought his guidance and was determined to follow his footsteps.
Munaser finally delivered the devastating news to Faten: Mohammed had been killed by a Ukrainian drone near Bakhmut. He stood up and fired at the drone when others were taking cover.
His body was lying in a morgue.
“If he is dead, we want his body,” Faten told AFP, also furious that they have not been officially told what happened to him.
“It is not only my brother, but many others,” she said. “It is a shame that young men are going to die in Russia.”
- ‘There is death here’ -
Abdul Hussein Motlak’s son, Alawi, traveled to Russia with Mohammed in April. Both of them went missing in May.
Before he disappeared, the 30-year-old called his family almost every day and sent them pictures of himself sitting in a bunker with Mohammed in military fatigues, or training together near Bakhmut.
“I told him to come back,” his father told AFP, but Alawi was determined to complete his contract.
In one video, he thanked Munaser for helping them get to Russia.
Munaser said he traveled to Moscow with his heart set on continuing further to Europe, like thousands of other Iraqi migrants. But the streets of Russia offered him a more enticing prospect: billboards to join the army.
“There is no future in Iraq. I tried my best there, but I couldn’t make it,” he said. “It is not about Russia or Ukraine. My priority is my family.”
Munaser said he joined the Russian army in 2024 and now has a Russian passport.
Despite the risks, he said he is happy he can send his family “around $2,500 a month,” an amount unimaginable for many Iraqis.
On his Telegram channel, Munaser offers visa invitations for people hoping to enlist, which he said cost up to $1,000, most of which goes to travel agencies.
The website of the Russian embassy in Iraq said a single-entry visa costs up to $140.
Munaser said he did not charge recruits for his service but warned that “brokers” on social media exploit young Iraqis and take a percentage of their army sign-up fee.
AFP was not able to verify his claims.
But Munaser warned that whatever the financial rewards of fighting for Russia, “there is death here.”
“We lived through many wars in Iraq, but this one is different. It is a war of advanced technology, a war of drones.”
Still, he said he had no regrets about enlisting, and was fighting under a Muslim Chechen commander. He has even signed a new army contract for another year.
- ‘Shame’ -
Thousands of foreign fighters have joined the Russians in Ukraine, with the biggest acknowledged contingent sent from North Korea, and with Chinese volunteers now also reportedly serving alongside Russian troops.
Ukraine has around 3,500 foreign fighters, according to its embassy in Iraq, but they receive standard army pay.
Estimates vary on how many Iraqis are fighting for Russia, but they are certainly hundreds.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Iraq, Ivan Dovhanych, said they “are not fighting for an idea. They are looking for a job.” Russia’s embassy in Baghdad did not respond to AFP requests for comment.
Iraqis have long fought abroad, with many joining local pro-Iran factions to fight alongside Russia to support Syria’s former president Assad.
But that intervention was a political decision and, for many, a religious duty to protect Shiite shrines in Syria.
Although Russia has good relations with Iraq and long supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons and military training, it has few religious and historical ties with the country’s Shiite majority.
Baghdad has been at pains to remain “neutral” in the Ukraine war and does not welcome its young men going to fight for Russia. Indeed some believe they are shaming Iraq.
In September a court in the south of the country jailed a man for life for human trafficking, accusing him of sending people to fight “in foreign countries.”
A security source told AFP he was “recruiting” for Russia.
The same month Iraq’s embassy in Moscow warned of “attempts to lure or coerce some Iraqis residing in Russia or abroad into joining the war under various pretexts.”
The uncle of an Iraqi missing in Russia for over two months told AFP he hoped the government cracks down on those luring young men to Russia.
“Mercenary” is a particularly pejorative word in Arabic. Such is the taboo that a family of a Russian recruit left their village in the south when he joined up, a relative told AFP.
In September he came home in a body bag and was laid to rest under the cover of darkness with no loved ones to mourn him, such was the heavy feeling of “shame.”
The relative said that the family — who received more than $10,000 with the body — faced disapproval from their community. Many believed he had dishonored them.
“It is heartbreaking. A boy died abroad and was buried in secret,” he said.
