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Hezbollah instructors trained ****ite militiamen at remote camps in
southern Iraq until three months ago when they slipped across the
border to Iran =97 presumably to continue instruction on Iranian soil,
according to two ****ite lawmakers and a top army officer.
The three Iraqis claim the Lebanese ****ites were also involved in
planning some of the most brazen attacks against U.S.-led forces,
including the January 2007 raid on a provincial government compound in
Karbala in which five Americans died.
The allegations, made in separate interviews with The Associated
Press, point not only to an Iranian hand in the Iraq war, but also to
Hezbollah's willingness to expand beyond its Lebanese base and assume
a broader role in the struggle against U.S. influence in the Middle
East.
All this suggests that ****ite-dominated Iran is waging a proxy war
against the United States to secure a dominant role in majority-****ite
Iraq, which has supplanted Lebanon as Tehran's top priority in the
Middle East.
"The stakes are much higher in Iraq, where there is a ****ite majority,
oil, the shrine cities and borders with Saudi Arabia," said analyst
Farid al-Khazen, a Christian Lebanese lawmaker whose party is allied
with Hezbollah.
"The big story is Iraq, and the Americans unwittingly opened it up for
the Iranians" by their invasion in 2003, al-Khazen said.
The allegations come as the United States and Iran are engaged in a
showdown over Tehran's nuclear program and each country's role in
Iraq.
Iran, Hezbollah's mentor, denies giving any sup****t to ****ite
extremists in Iraq.
But the three Iraqis who spoke to the AP said the Iranians prefer to
use Hezbollah instructors because as Arabs, they can communicate
better with the Iraqi ****ites and maintain a lower profile than Farsi-
speakers from Iran.
For Hezbollah, a high-risk role in Iraq could give the Lebanese
movement leverage with the United States and broaden its appeal within
the Arab world where anti-American sentiment remains strong.
Iraqi officials have said little about a Hezbollah role in this
country. However, President Jalal Talabani told U.S.-funded Alhurra
television this week that "there have been several occasions" when
Hezbollah members or those who "claim to belong to Hezbollah" have
been detained in Iraq.
He gave no further details.
But the two Iraqi lawmakers and the military officer said Hezbollah
instructors work only with members of the Iraqi ****ite "special
groups," the U.S. military's name for splinter factions of anti-
American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The U.S.
believes that Iran's elite Quds Force, a branch of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard, sup****ts the special groups.
All three Iraqis spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
supposed to release the information.
The lawmakers belong to al-Sadr's movement and were involved in the
creation of the Mahdi Army in 2003. The military officer's job gives
him access to highly classified intelligence information.
They said Hezbollah began training ****ite militiamen in the second
half of 2006 at two camps =97 Deir and Kutaiban =97 east of Basra near the
Iranian border. They fled across the border in late March or early
April this year after U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launched a crackdown
against militias in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.
In Iran, training resumed in camps once used by Iraqi exiles who
fought with Iranian forces during the 1980s war between the two
countries, the lawmakers said. Instruction includes explosives,
ambushes and use of rockets and mortars.
Citing testimony from special groups members in custody, the officer
said the Hezbollah instructors never numbered more than 10 at any one
time, kept a low profile and moved back and forth over the Iranian
border.
Indications that Hezbollah was playing a role in Iraq first surfaced
last July when the U.S. military announced the arrest of Ali Musa
Daqduq, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah operative allegedly training Iraqi
****ite militiamen.
At least one other Hezbollah operative, identified only as Faris, was
detained in Basra during fighting there in April and was handed over
to the Americans, the Iraqi military officer said.
The U.S. military has said little publicly about Hezbollah's
involvement here since announcing Daqduq's arrest, though it has
frequently alleged an Iranian role in arming, equipping and training
****ite extremists.
"At this point in time, we do not have any new, releasable information
regarding Hezbollah's involvement with special groups in Iran and
Iraq," a military spokesman, Capt. Charles Calio, said in an e-mail to
the AP.
A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut, Lebanon, refused to comment on any
role for his organization.
However, Ibrahim al-Ameen, a Lebanese newspaper editor close to
Hezbollah, said in a recent interview in Beirut that Hezbollah's
leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, spends several hours daily dealing
with "the situation in Iraq."
Nasrallah, who studied ****ite theology in Iraq, spoke at length about
Iraqi "resistance" during a speech last May that analysts believed was
aimed at bolstering his image as a godfather of Arab opposition to the
United States and Israel throughout the Middle East.
Beside its alleged role in Iraq, Hezbollah is known to have ties to
the Palestinian militant Hamas group. The charismatic Nasrallah has
become a sort of folk hero in the mostly Sunni Arab world after his
guerrillas fought Israeli forces to a standstill in a 34-day war in
2006.
A senior Western diplomat based in the Middle East said his government
has information suggesting a growing Hezbollah interest in events in
Iraq. However, the diplomat would say no more and insisted on
anonymity because the subject is so sensitive.
Hezbollah's possible role in direct attacks against U.S.-led forces is
murkier and more explosive.
The two Iraqi lawmakers said Hezbollah operatives planned and
supervised both the Karbala attack and the brazen daylight kidnapping
of five British nationals from a Finance Ministry compound in Baghdad
in May 2007. The Britons are still being held.
In the Karbala attack, English-speaking militants wearing American
uniforms and carrying American weapons stormed the compound, killing
one U.S. soldier and abducting four. The four were later found dead.
A senior Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said
Hezbollah's operations in Iraq had been supervised by Imad Mughniyeh,
a top commander of the guerrilla group killed in a car bomb in Syria
last February.
The shadowy figure was suspected of a role in the 1983 bombing of the
U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1992 attack on the Israeli
Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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