[Washington Times] Editorial - The Iraqi Army is attempting to disarm Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, a radical Shi'ite militia with longstanding ties to Tehran. Iraqi intelligence officials have said that senior Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was slain in Damascus two months ago, helped form the Mahdi Army in April 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein; some 300 fighters recruited from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia underwent military training with Hizbullah in Lebanon. In an August 2007 interview with the British Independent, al-Sadr said: "We copy Hizbullah in the way they fight and their tactics." According to U.S. military officials in Iraq, the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has played an extensive role in funneling arms to Iraqi Shi'ite militias.
2008-04-08 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive