'Kill the Americans, as many as possible'
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
BAGHDAD, Oct 1 (AFP): By day Ahmed works for an Iraqi security company. By night the stocky 30-year-old fights the "American occupier" in his Baghdad neighbourhood.
Ahmed admits he is a member of what the US military terms "Special Groups"-secret Shiite cells it says wage acts of "terrorism" in Iraq with the financial and military backing of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards units.
"Our mission," Ahmed tells AFP during a discreet interview in a Baghdad hotel car park: "Kill the Americans, as many Americans as possible."
He says he is proud to have been chosen, along with other fighters from his district of Bayaa, to do a one-month course on explosives and guerrilla tactics.
"I still don't know where I'll be sent. This will be communicated to me at the last minute," he says while fidgeting nervously with a string of black prayer beads.
"The best go to Lebanon, to be trained by Hezbollah, or to Iran in camps controlled by the Quds Force," the covert operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards. "Others go to camps in the (mainly Shiite) south of Iraq," where they are trained by Iraqi, Lebanese and Iranian instructors.
According to Ahmed, whose claims could not be independently verified, most members of the Special Groups are drawn from Iraq's main Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army of radical anti- American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
"Our chiefs are in regular contact with the leadership" of the Mahdi Army but "each acts independently," he says.
The US military has identified the Special Groups, which they say are fighting a proxy war for Iran, as a long-term threat. Tehran continually denies it is training or funding militants to fight in Iraq.
Son of a Shiite father and a Sunni mother, Ahmed says he is himself "not very religious."
His group of around 50 fighters can mobilise in minutes by means of coded phone calls. All have a trade, none is engaged in high-profile political activity, and unlike other militia groups, they operate as discretely as possible.
Ahmed admits he is a member of what the US military terms "Special Groups"-secret Shiite cells it says wage acts of "terrorism" in Iraq with the financial and military backing of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards units.
"Our mission," Ahmed tells AFP during a discreet interview in a Baghdad hotel car park: "Kill the Americans, as many Americans as possible."
He says he is proud to have been chosen, along with other fighters from his district of Bayaa, to do a one-month course on explosives and guerrilla tactics.
"I still don't know where I'll be sent. This will be communicated to me at the last minute," he says while fidgeting nervously with a string of black prayer beads.
"The best go to Lebanon, to be trained by Hezbollah, or to Iran in camps controlled by the Quds Force," the covert operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards. "Others go to camps in the (mainly Shiite) south of Iraq," where they are trained by Iraqi, Lebanese and Iranian instructors.
According to Ahmed, whose claims could not be independently verified, most members of the Special Groups are drawn from Iraq's main Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army of radical anti- American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
"Our chiefs are in regular contact with the leadership" of the Mahdi Army but "each acts independently," he says.
The US military has identified the Special Groups, which they say are fighting a proxy war for Iran, as a long-term threat. Tehran continually denies it is training or funding militants to fight in Iraq.
Son of a Shiite father and a Sunni mother, Ahmed says he is himself "not very religious."
His group of around 50 fighters can mobilise in minutes by means of coded phone calls. All have a trade, none is engaged in high-profile political activity, and unlike other militia groups, they operate as discretely as possible.