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Baghdad: The Mahdi Army, the staunchly anti-American militia currently on the run after successive Iraqi military campaign to dismantle its network, is increasingly going underground, Iraqi intelligence officials told Gulf News.
The Mahdi Army, considered the military wing of the Sadrist Movement that is led by Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr, is "turning itself into a secret armed organisation", said an official, quoting a report prepared by the Intelligence Directorate in the Iraqi Army.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of the report.
The development, they said, follows military campaigns ordered by Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in eastern Baghdad and the southern provinces of Basra and Maysan.
According to the intelligence report, some of whose contents were revealed to Gulf News, "more than 2,000 cadres from the Mahdi Army leaders were killed recently".
"This led to the almost complete collapse of the army", which was founded by Al Sadr in 2004, said the report.
Another 1,300 members of the Shiite militia "escaped to safe houses in Iran", the report quoted officials as saying.
The US and Iraqi authorities allege that the Mahdi Army is involved in the sectarian strife that raged in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 following the bombing of the holy shrines in Samaara, in northern Iraq in February 2006.
They also say that the Mahdi Army was being armed and trained by Iranian intelligence to launch attacks on the US forces. At one time, it was described as "a greater threat" than Al Qaida in Iraq.
The intelligence report expect "the end of the Mahdi Army" during the current military operation against it in Maysan province and its capital Amara.
"It is actually becoming a secret military organisation ... the number of members doesn't exceed 150-200, hugely down from the total estimated number of 50,000 in the past two years," the report said.
The new underground group "will be somewhat [similar] to Al Qaida and some of the other Sunni armed groups and will have to carry out quality operations against US forces and assassinate some of the important Iraqi figures [to prove itself]", the report said.
Muhanad Al Rawi, a former high-ranking officer in Ministry of the Interior during Saddam Hussain's regime, told Gulf News: "Al Sadr and Iran want to change the Mahdi Army into a secret organisation ... to focus [its activities] on resisting the US-led occupation ... to improve the image of the Mahdi Army, which was implicated in violence against the Sunnis during the sectarian strife in the past three years."
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