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| Logos of six Iraqi Shiite militias fighting for Assad |
The government of Iraq’s beleaguered Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki is paying each Iraqi recruit $500 a month to receive free
military training in Iran before being deployed in Syria to fight for President
Bashar al-Assad.
Beirut correspondent Viviane Aqiqi reports
the news exclusively today for Elaph, the first independent online Arab
daily launched in London in 2001.
Ms Aqiqi suggests the Quds Force unit, which is
under the command of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and is responsible for the “extraterritorial operations”
of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has so far recruited and trained in Iran and
Iraq some 5,000 Iraqi Shiite militiamen to fight for Assad.
She specifically names nine Iraqi militia
organizations feeding recruits to Assad via Soleimani.
They are:
As’ib Ahl al-Haq, which has 500 Shiite fighters in Syria, led by Kays
al-Khazali.
Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, which has 600 men fighting for Assad under the
command of Haj Hashem al-Hamadani.
Kata’ib
Sayyid al-Shuhada, which has 400
men fighting for Assad under the command of Haj Abu-Mustafa al-Sheibani.
Harakat
al-Nujaba’ led by Sheikh
Akram al-Kaabi.
The Promised Day
Brigades, the biggest Iraqi Shiite organization with nearly
2,000 men fighting for Assad.
Saraya
Tala’i al-Khurasani, whose leader Ali al-Yasiri has 200 men under his command.
Martyr Mohammad Baqir
al-Sadr Forces comprise 300 militiamen led by Mohammad Jaafar.
Liwa
Abul-Fadl al-Abbas, the most renowned of the Iraqi Shiite militias with
500 men fighting for Assad.
Imam
Hussein Brigades, a brigade of 150 fighters headed by Abu-Shahd
al-Jabbouri.
On 5 November 2008,
the day following the U.S. presidential elections, Elaph reached an
all-time record high of 18 million hits. As a result of its popularity and
international readership, Elaph.com became one of the leading news portals in
the Arab world.
The
website was officially audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its
traffic was certified in May 2010, producing ABC’s certificate of 1,179,801
users and 8,565,601 page impressions. Also based on August 2010 data, the
website had 1.3 million global users per month.
