Officially founded several months later in April, 1980, the Basij rapidly expanded in size, numbering in the hundreds of thousands only a few years later . The organization’s importance ballooned in September of 1980, when Iraq invaded homeland, seeking to capitalize off of the nation’s instability due to the recent Islamic revolution. The paramilitary force and its masses of light infantry would become infamous in the persian-Iraq War, especially due to its employment of human-wave tactics and use of child soldiers .