Shiite Militia’s Future in Doubt

By Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra

BAGHDAD – The violent Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran and no longer loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, adding a potentially even more deadly element to Iraq’s violent mix.

Two senior militia commanders told The Associated Press that hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

The breakup is an ominous development at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are working to defeat religious-based militias and secure Iraq under government control. While al-Sadr’s forces have battled the coalition repeatedly, including pitched battles in 2004, they’ve mostly stayed in the background during the latest offensive.

The U.S. military has asserted in recent months that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Quds force have been providing Shiite militias with weapons and parts for sophisticated armor-piercing bombs. The EFPs – explosively formed penetrators – are responsible for the deaths of more than 170 American and coalition soldiers since mid-2004, the military says.

In the latest such attack, four U.S. soldiers were killed March 15 by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.

At the Pentagon, a military official confirmed there were signs the Mahdi Army was splintering. Some were breaking away to attempt a more conciliatory approach to the Americans and the Iraqi government, others moving in a more extremist direction, the official said.

However, the official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name on the topic, was not aware of direct Iranian recruitment and financing of Mahdi Army members.

The outlines of the fracture inside the Mahdi Army were confirmed by senior Iraqi government officials with access to intelligence reports prepared for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The information indicates a disintegrating organization yet a potentially even more dangerous foe, they revealed, on condition that their names not be used.

The militia commanders and al-Maliki’s reports identify the leader of the breakaway faction as Qais al-Khazaali, a young Iraqi cleric who was a close al-Sadr aide in 2003 and 2004.

He was al-Sadr’s chief spokesman for most of 2004, when he made nearly daily appearances on Arabic satellite news channels. He has not been seen in public since late that year.

Another U.S. official, who declined to be identified because of the information’s sensitivity, said it was true that some gunmen had gone to Iran for training and that al-Khazaali has a following. However, the official could not confirm the number of his followers or whether Iran was financing them.

Al-Sadr has been in Iran since early February, apparently laying low during the U.S.-Iraqi offensive, according to the U.S. military. He is not known to be close to Iran’s leadership or Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

While Al-Sadr’s strategy appears to be to wait out the government offensive and preserve his force, his absence has left loyal fighters unsure of his future and pondering whether they had been abandoned by their leader, the commanders said.

Al-Sadr tried to return to Iraq last month but turned back before he reached the Iraqi border upon learning of U.S. checkpoints on the road to Najaf.

The Mahdi Army commanders, who said they would be endangered if their names were revealed, said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were funding and arming the defectors from their force, and that several hundred over the last 18 months had slipped across the Iranian border for training.

(c) 2007 Charleston Gazette, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.