The Iranian connection: from Tehran to Baghdad

The modest initial gains made by the US-led security "surge" in Baghdad face a devastating new threat as thousands of Iraqi Shias are reported to be receiving military training in Iran.

Spectacular suicide bombings last week in the capital, which destroyed a bridge across the Tigris and killed an MP in the parliamentary building in the heart of the Green Zone, have left US spokesmen struggling to combat the perception that the crackdown is failing. They have insisted that the operation must be given time to work, with only half of the 30,000 extra troops having arrived so far, and have pointed to a decline in the activities of death squads, although the numbers of bodies found in the streets has lately started to rise again.

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There are also indications that violence has been displaced outside Baghdad, with the overall death rate among civilians remaining steady, despite a fall in the capital. The effect has been the opposite for American troops: while losses have stayed roughly the same across the country, the rate of American deaths in Baghdad during the first seven weeks of the "surge" nearly doubled from the previous period.

Despite the impact of bombings, which have also increased in number, US commanders say life is more normal in many parts of Baghdad as troops flood the streets. But this is believed to be almost entirely due to the decision of the most hostile Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, and its charismatic leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, to lie low during the operation. Now it appears that many Shia militants are using the interval to obtain sophisticated guerrilla training in Iran.

Abu Rafed, 32, fought for the Mahdi Army in the battles for Najaf during the summer of 2004, when hundreds of militants were killed by superior US forces. He said the fierce combat had made it obvious a new approach was needed if outgunned guerrillas were to inflict defeats on 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."

Both he and another militant, 39-year-old Abu Amer, who spoke to The Independent on Sunday through an Iraqi intermediary, asking for their full names to be withheld, said they had undergone training at a base in Jalil Azad, near Tehran. Though extremely secretive about their activities there, they said they used live ammunition on firing ranges and learned house-to-house fighting in a replica of a typical city street. There was also classroom-based tuition.

Abu Rafed estimated a total of almost 4,000 Iraqi Shias, including "many important Mahdi Army leaders", had received training there last month alone, living at the camp for weeks at a time. He said the number of Iraqi Shias arriving there had increased significantly since the start of the "surge" in February.

Abu Amer said: "The training was done by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I saw Iraqi fighters from Missan, Basra, Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah [areas of southern Iraq]. They were mainly Mahdi Army, but not all of them." More Iraqi Shias had sought military instruction, he added, after the 2006 bombing of the Samarra shrine, the event widely blamed for triggering widespread sectarian war between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias.

Although the vast majority of American casualties have been inflicted by Sunni insurgents, the US military views the Mahdi Army as the most dangerous faction in Iraq's sectarian war. It has frequently battled against British and US forces in Iraq, most recently in Diwaniyah, and has also been blamed for carrying out death squad killings of Sunnis and political assassinations. In recent months hundreds of its members have been arrested.These moves have prompted many Sadrists to believe they are on the brink of an all-out confrontation with the US Army. Peter Harling, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group who is considered a leading authority on al-Sadr, said he had his own information that Mahdi Army fighters were now being trained in Iran. This "in no way implied" the operation was sponsored by the Iranian authorities, he added, although he suggested they were aware of it and chose to turn a blind eye.

The US has sought to portray the Sadr movement as an Iranian proxy, but the Sadrists are fervent nationalists who have also refused to tolerate Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs. Mr Harling noted "more lenient overtones" recently, however. "That suggests that either the Mahdi Army is in greater need of Iranian support or relations have actually improved."

Major Mike Hakeman, an intelligence officer with the 82nd Airborne Division, currently deployed in Iraq, told the IoS there was no firm evidence of links to Iran. But, "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."

Major General William Caldwell, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, suggested last week that Iran was even giving help to some Sunni insurgents.

Within the Mahdi Army, suggestions of military ties with Iran are controversial, with many members insisting Iraqis are standing alone against foreigners.

"Our enemies try to say our leaders are hiding in Iran or that we depend on Iran or Hizbollah for support," said Mohammed Rabie Almejblie, a 26-year-old Sadrist militant in Wasit, southern Iraq. "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."