Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Below is an excerpt from Bill Roggio’s Long War Journal. You can read the full article here:

Imad Mugniyah, the senior Hezbollah military commander who was killed in Syria earlier this month, helped form the Mahdi Army, the military wing of the radical Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr, according to an Iraqi intelligence official. He was described as a “co-founder” of the Mahdi Army, Naharnet reported, based on a translation from the Iraqi daily Al Zaman.

Mugniyah helped form the Mahdi Army after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. He recruited from the Shia communities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and then sent the recruits to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley for training. “The 300 fighters were trained on the use of assault rifles, booby-trapping and kidnapping operations,” the unnamed intelligence official told Al Zaman.

Once in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army recruits were sent to bases run by Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Qods Force, the foreign special operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Hezbollah operates numerous bases in the Bekaa Valley, under the supervision of Syrian intelligence.

The links between Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army are not new. Mahdi Army fighters have admitted to training in inside Lebanon with Hezbollah, while Muqtada al Sadr also admitted his forces trained with Hezbollah and mirrored their tactics.

“We have formal links with Hezbollah, we do exchange ideas and discuss the situation facing Shiites in both countries,” Sadr told The Independent in August 2007. “It is natural that we would want to improve ourselves by learning from each other. We copy Hezbollah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this.” Sadr also said his fighters trained in Lebanon while the Mahdi Army leadership conferred with Hezbollah over Israel’s plans in the Middle East.

Hezbollah is essentially the Lebanese branch of Iran’s Qods Force. Mugniyah was Hezbollah’s mastermind terrorist and also a senior leader in Qods Force. Dr. Magnus Ranstorp, an expert on Hezbollah describesd Mugniyah as standing “with one foot within Hezbollah (reporting to Nasrallah directly) and with one foot in Iran inside the architectures of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the al-Qods unit within the Iranian Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps].” Dr. Ranstorp also said, “there are two Iranian representatives (from the Iranian embassy in Beirut/Damascus) that provide a direct link on matters that require strategic guidance or Iranian assistance or arbitration” to Hezbollah’s executive Shura, or council.

The US military had proof of Hezbollah’s direct involvement with the Mahdi Army and the Iranian-backed Special Groups terror cells since early 2007. On July 2, 2007, Multinational Forces Iraq announced the capture of Ali Mussa Daqduq, a senior Hezbollah operative, inside Iraq. Daqduq was a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah, who has commanded both a Hezbollah special operations unit and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s security detail.