Hezbollah (70 page)

So it was that Hezbollah, at Iran’s behest, helped develop a sophisticated training program for Shi’a militants from Iraq. Some training occurred in Iraq, reportedly at the Deir and Kutaiban Camps east of Basra near the Iranian border. According to statements from detained Special Groups members, Hezbollah trainers numbered no more than ten at a time. Trainers, including Daqduq, always kept a low profile and never stayed in Iraq for very long, moving back and forth across the Iranian border.
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In Iran, Hezbollah and Qods Force instructors ran a well-organized training program in which Daqduq was directly involved.
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The outsourcing of training to Hezbollah spoke volumes for Iran’s regard for the group’s professionalism as terrorist trainers. The use of Hezbollah also averted Iraqi militants’ complaints about the religious indoctrination included in the Iranian training programs, which were generally uninspiring and taught by sheikhs who did not speak Arabic well.
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According to documents seized by coalition forces, a formal selection process for prospective trainees considered the needs identified by Special Groups leaders but also set minimal qualifications for admittance. Candidates had to be able to read and write, for example, but Special Groups leaders also sought open-minded, strong, mature, and responsible people who demonstrated acumen for organizational skills and were “not a problem.”
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The Qods Force and its Hezbollah instructors trained some twenty to sixty Iraqis at a time, in sessions generally lasting twenty days.
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Iraqi militants selected to train in Iran traveled to camps well inside the country through several well-organized ratlines, a mirror image of those moving weapons into Iraq. According to the statements of Iraqi detainees, Amara, a city in southeastern Iraq, served as a hub for the movement of militants into Iran. Iraqi militants flocked to Mahdi Army and Special Groups safe houses in Amara from the predominantly Shi’a areas where they were recruited. One Special Groups militant described the process, as summarized in a US intelligence report:

When the training travel was ready, [redacted] would call the SG (Special Group) areas and have the trainees travel to Amara. The trainees would usually travel by taxi, a seven to eight passenger vehicle, to the Baghdad garage in Amara. Once in Amara, the trainees would contact [redacted] and inform him of their arrival. [Redacted] would arrange to have someone, usually [redacted][,] meet
the trainees and take them to an Amara SG safe house. [Redacted] would meet the trainees at the safe house where he would provide each 100 USD, brief them on their travel and what to be aware of, and verify their passports. The trainees would then wait at the safe house until [redacted] told them it was time to depart for Iran. The trainees would again use taxis, usually seven to eight person vehicles, in their travel to the Iranian and Iraqi border.
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Some trainees reported crossing the border legally, others illegally. Either way, once across they met Iranian guides who escorted them to safe houses and hotels in the nearby Iranian border towns of Ahvez and Kermanshah. From there, the Qods Force arranged for the trainees to catch flights to Tehran. Once in Iran’s capital, Special Groups members stayed in apartments on the city’s outskirts, where preliminary training took place indoors. Trainees also described riding a bus two or three hours away from Tehran to “military style training complexes manned by uniformed Iranian soldiers.”
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Despite the pledges of senior Iranian leaders to cease such support, Defense Intelligence Agency director Burgess told Congress in 2010, “Iran continues to provide money, weapons and training to select Iraqi Shia militants and terrorists.” In Iran, Gen. Ronald Burgess added, “the Qods Force or Lebanese Hezbollah-led training includes: small arms, reconnaissance, small unit tactics, and communications.” The training that the Qods Force and Hezbollah provided shed significant light on the kinds of operations Iran sought to see proliferate in Iraq. In particular, the focus was on providing elite trainees the “training, tactics and technology” to conduct assassinations and kidnappings and handle IEDs and EFPs. Other training focused on intelligence and sniper operations.
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The twenty-day basic training course experienced by most trainees covered paramilitary skills and basic weapons training, including training with mortars, IEDs, and small arms. Among graduates, a smaller number would be selected for a more intense, advanced paramilitary course that stressed advanced operations and tactics. Trainees in this course would be expected to take on leadership roles, and the material therefore included topics such as logistics and support, weapons employment, explosives engineering, tactics, and information operations.
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For an even more select group, the Qods Force and Hezbollah offered two additional programs: a master trainer program and an elite Special Forces course. Given the cost, logistical barriers, and other risks associated with covertly bringing Iraqis to Iran for training, instituting a “train the trainer” component to the Qods Force/Hezbollah program just made sense. Far more trainees could be reached if Iraqi instructors could offer training courses in Iraq. As one Special Groups recruiter told a trainee selected for a third round of training in Iran, this time for the master trainer course, “I want to send you over there because you’re an educated guy, so we’ll send you to Iran.… You’re gonna have some experiences and with this experience you’re gonna pass it to your friends.”
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Iran did not want its fingerprints all over the training program, a detained Iraqi militant would later explain, seeking instead to develop
an independent Iraqi training program that could not be traced back to the Islamic Republic.
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Over the course of 2006–7, several Special Groups members noted in their debriefings, sixteen operatives made several trips to Iran to take the master trainer course. Four specialized in EFPs; four in mortars and rockets; four in conventional weapons; and four in tactical and guerrilla warfare such as booby traps, kidnappings, and attacks on coalition bases and convoys.
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In April 2008, a US senator asked General Petraeus if it would be fair to say that Iranian-backed Special Groups in Iraq were responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. “It certainly is,” Petraeus answered.
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As for the Special Forces training, that seems to have been tailored to specific trainees or specific needs. Some detained militants described a thirty-day course that included swimming, diving, fitness, and driving. Others described a twelve-day course focused on tactics and use of the Iranian-produced Strella antiaircraft missile, courses on advanced sniper skills, and even the unenviable though critical courses in administration and management. Interestingly, some of these courses were offered in Lebanon as well as Iran.
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Some Iraqi Shi’a traveled through Iran en route to Syria and then Lebanon, where they were trained by Hezbollah experts. These trainees made their way to Tehran using the same facilitation networks as those remaining in Iran for training, but then caught flights to Syria and traveled overland from Damascus International Airport to and across the Lebanese border. Excerpts from a US intelligence report, which paraphrases a detained Iraqi militant’s description of his travel to a training camp in Lebanon, document the operational security involved in transporting the Iraqi Shi’a militants from the Damascus airport to Lebanon. On his arrival in Damascus on a commercial flight from Iran, the detainee and his fellow Iraqi trainees were met halfway down the jetway by an unidentified male who collected their tickets and baggage tags. They were led away from the passenger terminal to the airport operations area, where they boarded a bus. After driving through farmland, the trainees were instructed to board different vehicles operated by Lebanese drivers.
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Some of the Iraqi trainees appear to have been selected for additional training in Lebanon after completing some training in Iran. In other cases, possibly those of more experienced fighters, candidates went straight to Lebanon without first training in Iran. Hezbollah and IRGC instructors both reportedly concurred that the paramilitary training Hezbollah provided in Lebanon was superior to the training provided in Iran.
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Whereas most Iraqi trainees appear to have attended a three-to four-week course focused on management of paramilitary activities, others attended courses on management of personnel and project planning and still others on advanced intelligence training, with an emphasis on collecting intelligence on coalition forces in Iraq. Meanwhile, even as Hezbollah trained Iraqi militants in Lebanon on behalf of the Qods Force, the Qods Force continued to operate training camps of its own in Lebanon, where, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency testified, it trains Hezbollah operatives “and other fighters.”
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Wherever they trained, Iraqi militants could never have been as lethally effective as they were without the $750,000 to $3 million a month in funding and arms they received from Iran. “Without this support,” US military authorities concluded, “these special groups would be hard pressed to conduct their operations in Iraq.”
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Asked the source of the 107-millimeter rockets Shi’a insurgents were firing on the Green Zone in Baghdad, General Petraeus replied succinctly, “They come from Iran.” By early 2008, 107-millimeter rockets were turning up in seized weapons caches, with forty-five found in one cache alone, which also included several thousand pounds of explosives, all from Iran. Included among detainees who explained the Special Groups’ process to officials were Qods Force operatives and Special Groups leaders and financiers.
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Speaking in summer 2008, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani acknowledged that “there have been several occasions” when Hezbollah operatives or people who “claim to belong to Hezbollah” were detained in Iraq. Aside from Ali Moussa Daqduq, Iraqi military sources noted the April 2008 arrest of a Hezbollah operative identified only as Faris.
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As a result of Iran and Hezbollah’s training program, the Special Groups quickly became one of the most pressing security challenges in Iraq. “Unchecked,” General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2008, “the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.”
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Over time, Hezbollah provided the Iraqi insurgents “with the training, tactics and technology to conduct kidnappings, small unit tactical operations, and employ sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), incorporating lessons learned from operations in Southern Lebanon,” according to an April 2010 Pentagon report.
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In Iraq, Shi’a militants were now far better trained in the specialized capabilities needed to carry out daring kidnapping and assassination attacks targeting coalition forces. It would not take long before Hezbollah operatives would begin directing Iraqi militants in the execution of exactly such operations.

A 2009 report on Hezbollah’s IJO (also known as the External Services Organization, or ESO) by the Australian attorney general is most interesting for its conclusion that Hezbollah’s activities in Iraq went much further than simply training Iraqi Shi’a militants tied to Iran: “Hizballah has established an insurgent capability in Iraq, engaging in assassinations, kidnappings and bombings. The Hizballah units have been set up with the encouragement and resources of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards al Qods Brigades. Hizballah has also established a special training cell known as Unit 3800 (previously known as Unit 2800) specifically to train Shia fighters prior to action in Iraq.”
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The Australian report provides no details regarding the assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings it attributes to Hezbollah in Iraq. But the US military also uncovered evidence, albeit limited, suggesting Hezbollah may have run operations of its own in Iraq. A US intelligence report includes the assessment of an Iraqi militant who believed one of his Hezbollah trainers in Iran seemed to have previously been involved in covert activities in
Iraq. Paraphrasing the Iraqi militant’s statement, the intelligence report relayed the detainee’s information:

[Redacted] is the Lebanese Hezbollah trainer in charge of the training camp [Detainee] attended in Iran…. [Detainee] thinks [redacted] has operated in Iraq because [redacted] always used to talk about how Iraqi food is not good and how the Iraqis do not have good water. [Redacted] would drop hints like this to let the trainees know that [redacted] has worked in Iraq. [Redacted] was one of the more respectful of the LH [Lebanese Hezbollah] trainers, and appeared to demonstrate some knowledge of Iraqi culture. [Redacted] would say things about Iraq in a way that let the trainees know that [redacted] has been to Iraq before. There are two kinds of LH, the kind you see on television, and the secret underground kind. All the trainers in Iran were the secret LH. If [redacted] was in Iraq it would not be for a trip, [redacted] would only go to do secret LH work. [Redacted] spoke Iraqi dialect very well but it was still apparent that [redacted] was Lebanese.
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Nor were the Australians and Americans alone in their concern over Hezbollah operational activities in Iraq targeting their soldiers. British forces had a particular interest in Hezbollah activity in Iraq, beyond the fact that the area of southern Iraq under their control, and the city of Basra in particular, was a hotbed of Iraqi Shi’a extremist activity and a ratline for travel to training camps in Iran and Lebanon. In particular, while British officials first viewed the evidence skeptically, they ultimately concluded that “British soldiers were being killed by Shia special groups at a depressing and, it appeared, rising rate.”
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Then, on May 29, 2007, Hezbollah-trained Iraqi militants kidnapped five British citizens in a brazen attack on the Iraqi Ministry of Finance.