The San Francisco Chronicle – Iraqi Shiites are being trained in advanced guerrilla warfare tactics at a secret camp inside Iran, according to two militants who say they have spent time there. Seasoned guerrilla fighters said large numbers of Mahdi Army volunteers have gone to a base near Tehran for instruction in how to shoot down helicopters and destroy armored vehicles. The Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has frequently battled against U.S. and British forces in Iraq, most recently in Diwaniya. The militia, estimated to range up to 20,000 men, has also been linked to death-squad killings of Sunnis and political assassinations.
The fighters’ assertions could not be independently verified. But Peter Harling, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, an influential Brussels-based research organization, and a leading authority on al-Sadr, said Mahdi Army fighters were now being trained in Iran.
"I have had confirmation that some of the Mahdi Army’s ‘historic’ commanders have sought refuge in Iran, where, according to their family members and friends, they are currently receiving military training" in preparation for further fighting inside Iraq, Harling said.
Harling said this "in no way implied" the operation was sponsored by the Iranian authorities, although he suggested they were aware of it and chose to turn a blind eye.
The Bush administration and its top ally, Britain, have repeatedly charged that Iran is supplying arms, training and intelligence to Iraqi Shiite militants to use against the U.S.-led coalition, although the United States has not presented incontrovertible proof of its contentions. Iran vehemently denies arming or aiding the militants.
Last week, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, told reporters that Iranian intelligence agents were providing "some support" to Sunnis as well as Shiite extremists. He displayed a small arsenal of arms seized in a Sunni neighborhood whose markings, he said, showed they were of Iranian manufacture. He also said, without giving details, that Shiite fighters were receiving training in Iran.
The issue of Mahdi Army fighters being trained in Iran remains an opaque subject. Army Maj. Mike Hakeman, an intelligence officer with the 82nd Airborne Division, currently deployed in Iraq, told The Chronicle last week there was no firm evidence of Mahdi Army links to Iran.
"We have unconfirmed but credible reports of Jaish al Mahdi (Mahdi Army) people going to Iran to train and coming back here to fight," he said. "We have reports from our units they have been attacked with Iranian weapons, but it’s a tenuous link."
The two fighters who said they have been to the Iranian camp are extremely secretive about their activities there. Both were interviewed separately by an Iraqi researcher who also visited Iran. The researcher, who has worked previously with The Chronicle, asked that his name be withheld for reasons of personal safety.
Both militants said they used live ammunition on firing ranges and learned how to fight house-to-house at a mock-up street scene. There was also classroom-based instruction, they said.
Abu Amer, a 39-year-old Mahdi Army fighter from southern Iraq who said he has gone to the base, said he believed the instructors were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a military organization outside of the Iranian army under the control of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
"Shiite fighters are being trained in modern fighting methods, such as use of powerful explosives and bringing down helicopters," he said, declining to give more precise details. "The training was done by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I saw Iraqi fighters from Missan, Basra, Diwaniya and Nasiriya (areas of southern Iraq). They were mainly Mahdi Army, but not all of them."
According to Abu Amer — he asked that his full name be kept secret — the military instruction became more popular among Iraqi Shiites after the 2005 bombing of the Samarra shrine, the event widely blamed for causing widespread sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites.
Iraqi insurgents, particularly fighters of the Mahdi Army, have previously refused to admit that an Iranian connection exists.
Yet in face-to-face interviews carried out both in Iran and Iraq, a different picture emerged.
A self-professed veteran of the Iranian training center, who asked to be identified only as Abu Rafed, said he had seen hundreds of fellow Iraqi Shiites there, not all of them followers of al-Sadr.
"Many of us from the Mahdi Army were in Jalil Azad and got training in street fighting," the 32-year-old said during an interview in Qom, the center of Iran’s religious authorities. "We were taught how to attack the Americans, we learned all the modern ways to shoot down helicopters and destroy tanks and armored vehicles. It is preparation for the time when we will have a big battle with the occupiers."
Abu Rafed fought as part of the Mahdi Army in the battles for Najaf during the summer of 2004, when hundreds of militants were killed by superior U.S. forces. He said the fierce combat had made it obvious a new approach was needed for outgunned guerrillas to confront the Americans.
"This is a new plan now for the Mahdi Army; it is part of a new strategy," he said. "We know we are against a strong enemy, and we must learn proper methods and techniques. Our techniques must change if we are to have salvation from the despotism and tyranny imposed by the Americans on the Islamic nation."
Abu Rafed said that among those receiving training at the Iranian camp were "many important Mahdi Army leaders." He said he was there last month for several weeks.
By Abu Rafed’s account, the number of Iraqi Shiites arriving at the camp had increased significantly since the United States launched its stepped-up security efforts in Baghdad in February.
Although Sunni insurgents are responsible for the majority of American casualties, the U.S. military views the Mahdi Army as the most dangerous faction in Iraq’s sectarian war. In recent months, hundreds of its members have been arrested.
These moves have prompted many backers of al-Sadr to believe they are on the brink of an all-out confrontation with the U.S. Army, according to the two fighters. Both said Mahdi Army members had gone to the Iranian camp because they felt their untrained, ill-disciplined militia wing was under increasing threat.
Al-Sadr’s organization is a key player in Iraqi politics, providing crucial political support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and holding several important Cabinet posts. Since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, the Mahdi Army has opposed, often violently, the presence of American and British troops on Iraqi soil. The United States portrays al-Sadr’s movement as an Iranian proxy.
But the Sadrists, as they are known, are fervent nationalists, and oppose Persian Iran’s involvement in Arab Iraqi affairs. Much of al-Sadr’s rhetoric has been both anti-Iranian and anti-American, although Harling, the International Crisis Group analyst, noted this balance recently had shifted.
"Sadrist discourse has evolved with respect to Iran and taken on more lenient overtones," he said. "That suggests either the Mahdi Army is in greater need of Iranian support or that relations have actually improved."
Even within the Mahdi Army, suggestions of military ties with Iran are controversial, with many members insisting Iraqis are standing alone against foreigners.
Mohammed Rabie Almejblie, a 26-year-old Sadrist militant in Wasit, southern Iraq, was adamant that none of the movement’s fighters had gone to Iran, dismissing the idea as propaganda. He also rejected claims, made last year by U.S. intelligence officials, that elements of the Mahdi Army had received training from Hezbollah, the highly organized Lebanese Shiite group backed by Iran.
"Our enemies try to say our leaders are hiding in Iran or that we depend on Iran or Hezbollah for support," he said. "But the Mahdi Army is a grassroots Iraqi movement that believes in the liberation from occupation forces. Solving these problems is for the Iraqis themselves."