Wednesday, 19 August 2015

Iran’s efforts to maintain militants in Iraq

At a time when the Iraqi people are in their massive nationwide demonstrations demanding government officials respond to their basic living necessities, and all countries across the region are emphasizing on the people’s legitimate rights, Iran is in pursuit of its own policy. 

Through the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force Tehran is busy continuously sending more and more consignments of weapons, missiles, and equipment for militant forces linked to Iraq to maintain their readiness to crackdown against any change on the ground in this country. Iran is concerned about the Iraqi people’s uprising growing to annihilate all signs of corruption, and to this end the focus turning to the dossier of Iran-backed militants’ measures. As a result these forces will no longer be able play their role in Iraq as Iran’s proxies. Therefore, in addition to sending consignments of weapons and ammunition, Iran has launched different training courses to revive the broken spirits of these units.
- Currently Abu Mehdi al-Mohandess is the senior coordinator of logistical and back up support for the Popular Mobilizatoin Forces (PMF). These measures are carried out through Iran’s borders and especially the Mehran border crossing by organizing forces and specific assets from each militant group. A representative of each PMF militant group receives his portion of the weapons consignment at the Iran-Iraq border and transfers them to its own bases and caches. These ordnances are then sold on the black market, or used in transactions with other militant groups. Four-barrel and single barrel anti-aircraft guns, artillery guns, BKC machine guns, AK-47s, 107mm rockets, various types of missiles, mortar rounds and different types of ammunition. Even food supplies and rice rations for these units are provided from Iran. In this regard Badr militants are known to receive the most amount of support, and this is due to Hadi al-Ameri’s very close relations with senior Iranian officials.
- In these consigments from Iran there were also some very worn-out weapons such as small arms, 12.7mm guns and 14.3mm single barrel guns numbering at over 200 pieces. They were all out of order and unusable for the militants, and they too were trying to find buyers on the black market.
- Currently the militants, including the Badr forces, and also Ashura and Sarayaye Jihad battalions present in the Saqlaviya region northwest of Fallujah, are very low in morale and spirits, and are literally left in limbo conditions. To keep their forces in the front lines commanders are constantly resorting to lies about preperations for a major operation and that they will soon take over all Sunni areas and cleanse those grounds of any Sunnis. The militant commanders are mainly concerned about how to lift the spirits of their forces in order to forget about the waves of recent defeats and setbacks. In such conditions they know very well that only 25% of the troops sent for leave will actually return, and the rest will never be seen in the frontlines. Their forces are defecting more and more each day.

- In coordination with Iran some of these forces have recently been dispatched to the Lebanese Hezbollah to undergo new training courses. Some of these troops are from the Ashura and Iraq Hezbollah battalions that have been sent to Lebanon. These training courses are of course nothing new and during the past year alone these militants have been sent to Lebanon many times for training. Upon their return most of them are not willing to take part in the fighting, and are seen fleeing their ranks and files.

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