The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

But the fight for an Islamist Republic of Iran was far from over. There were many betrayers to be dealt with internally as well as the venting of long-held external animosities toward The Great Satan, the despised United States of America. The young man raised under the shadow of Alamut had been there from the very beginning, from the sacking of military armories and dealing with government forces still loyal to the Shah, to the execution of those same traitors.

Then came the day when he and 500 other ‘students,’ marching under the banner of The Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line, took over the American Embassy in downtown Tehran. With the implicit assistance of the newly-formed Islamic republic, they had collectively thumbed their noses at the Great Satan for 444 days by continually brutalizing their hostages and costing President Jimmy Carter any chance of being elected to a second term.

Within another year following the release of the American hostages, the fledging Islamist Republic of Iran was embroiled in a devastating war with the neighboring country of Iraq. The Iranians were pushed back by the well-trained Iraqi military forces and the Iranian Army, long at war with itself, was showing every sign of collapsing. As a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who remained fanatically loyal to the Ayatollah, the man now called Yahla al-Qassam had been one of many in taking drastic measures to turn their precarious situation around.

One of the most desperate of those drastic measures involved the creation of the Basij Mostazafan, or ‘Mobilization of the Oppressed.’ What became commonly referred to as the Basij was the brainchild of the Ayatollah Khomeini himself, and was seized upon by the Revolutionary Guards to combat the superior military advantages of their Iraqi foes.

Made up mostly of a corps of teenaged boys between the ages of twelve and seventeen, the Basij became a symbol of Iranian theological resolve. Best known for their human wave style of attacks, they were sacrificed by the hundreds of thousands to clear the way for the far better equipped, professional Iranian military units, including many elements of the Revolutionary Guards themselves.

Thus was the symbiotic relationship between the Basij and the IRG, or Sephah. Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen would recruit male youth for the Basij, usually from the ranks of the very poorest and downtrodden. The pauperized families of these martyrs-to-be were promised financial compensation, as well as other opportunities that to this juncture had never existed for them.

Their sons, many little more than children, were given a rudimentary training course of some two weeks and sent to the front. Each was issued a key by their Sephah superiors, a key that would supposedly unlock the doors of heaven to enjoy divine blessings. Sometimes, almost as an afterthought, they might be hastily armed. Often times they were not.

Their recruitment was done by the Sephah, their training was conducted by the Sephah and in the field they were commanded by the Sephah. To complete this wretchedly pathetic symbiosis, they willingly sacrificed their lives upon the express orders of those very same mentors.

Early in the war, the Iranians attempted to use donkeys and other animals to clear the innumerable minefields in which the Iraqi forces excelled with markedly deadly effect. However, this experiment was soon deemed unsuccessful, as the animals would scatter in every direction after one or two of them detonated a mine. What was needed were sweepers who would follow orders, staying in perfect lines even as others that they called friends were blown apart on either side.

The Basij’s initial reason for existence was to provide a ready supply of such mine sweepers. The widespread utilization of these child volunteers became so refined that the young boys would wrap themselves in funeral shrouds before starting their advance, making it easier to give what was left of their bodies a proper burial after detonating a mine. There was never a shortage of these volunteers.

The man called Yahla al-Qassam had experienced a heady rise in his prominence during this ghastly period. As an IRG member he recruited, trained and then ordered innumerable Basij youth to their deaths. He took great pride in these units, among all others his were always the most highly motivated and ready to die. Often enough his biggest difficulty was keeping them reined in until the proper time. The young boys often wanted to run to their deaths instead of purposely walking forward, keeping those ever important perfect lines in their near suicidal formations.

His superiors noted al-Qassam’s innate leadership abilities and loyalty to the cause, and soon earmarked him for bigger and better things. Within two more years he was in southern Lebanon, advising a ragtag bunch of mostly Shi’a Lebanese militants who called themselves the Hezbollah. The assignment had been a herculean task in the wholesale killing zones of southern Lebanon. Whoever the opposing militias did not manage to dispose of, the Israeli Defense Forces summarily finished off.

Nevertheless, that hard fact also served as a major culling effect in improving the Hezbollah ranks. Combined with proper training and guidance from Sephah, along with tacit supply and logistics links furnished by the neighboring Syrians, this formerly vagabond group rapidly morphed into the premier terrorist organization of their kind.

It was during this period that al-Qassam assumed his current name. It had a far more local ring than his old one of Persian lineage, and his Shi’a Lebanese comrades appreciated the lengths that he took in proving worthy of their loyalty and trust. The IRG operative made it a point to learn their local dialect of Arabic, rather than speaking to them in his native Farsi as many of his Sephah peers had done. His new comrades responded in kind, and soon enough he found himself firmly emplaced as not only one of the golden ones in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but also in the eyes of the increasingly dangerous