THE SHIITE JIHAD IN SYRIA AND ITS REGIONAL EFFECTS

BUILDING AN ARMY FOR ZAINAB n 23
military personnel killed five American service members. In a raid on AAH
leader Qais al-Khazali’s Basra safe house, documents were found linking
Dulaimi to the AAH network and showing he had been put in charge of the
Karbala attack. 140
The connections to al-Sadr also exist with the late Abu Hajjar, whom
Reuters identified as an “Iraqi defector” from the Mahdi Army. 141 As such
stories make clear, the Mahdi Army was a fount for many fighters in Syria.
Additional examples were provided in an October 2012 Reuters report 142 and
a New York Times story shortly thereafter. 143
Recruitment: Shiite Militias
Establish Themselves
Recruitment for Shiite protomilitias took various forms. Willing residents
constituted an early source of fighters. Once LAFA was established in 2012,
combatants were supplied and armed by a combination of Syrian government
and possibly Iranian sources. The scale and sophistication of Iranian supplies
and arms, via proxy networks in Iraq and Lebanon, grew later in 2013. (For
more details on recruitment for Shiite militias, see appendix 8.)
Certain local Shiite militias reportedly received training from the IRGC
and Hezbollah. The IRGC role was given credence after NBC News correspondent
Richard Engel and four members of his news team were kidnapped
for five days in late 2012 before escaping during a firefight at a checkpoint.
According to Engel, his kidnappers were “openly expressing their Shiite faith”
and were “trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.” 144
In fall of 2012, streams of combatants also flowed to Syria from Iraq. Initially,
these fighters mainly followed two ideological trends. Nevertheless, it
is important to note that many nonideological fighters were later recruited.
In fact, they were the primary targets of most recruitment campaigns. The
first trend, in any event, consisted of adherents of Ayatollah Khamenei
and other clerics supporting absolute velayat-e faqih. These fighters often
belonged to directly controlled Iranian proxy groups and were thus fully
backed by the IRGC and answering to direct religious orders in the form
of a taklif sharii. Fighters coming from Lebanon belonged overwhelmingly
to Lebanese Hezbollah, although with limited participation by volunteers
from the Amal Movement, whose members usually do not look to clerics
toeing Iran’s ideological line. 145 Iraqi proxies Kataib Hezbollah and AAH
were also active, reporting their first losses in early 2013, although maintain-