to raise a piece of cloth (dressed like a cleric from Mashad)
You don't think this 'piece of cloth' might be the black flag with the AQ logo?
(Thanks, Neosgirl)
Here is what Maysarah's father wrote around the latest audio tape from Zarqawi - with links to the audio.
"You don't think this 'piece of cloth' might be the black flag with the AQ logo?"
True. But it also has something to do with the Iranian backed "Army of the Mahdi" in southern Iraq.
As the late Ayatollah Khomeini was fond of saying:
"The Road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala".
"Tariq al-Qods" ("The Road to Jerusalem").
The "Qods Force" is the organization within the IRGC that UBL (but mostly Zawahiri) and AQ has worked with since the early 1990s. They were the ones who engineered Mogadishu in 1993.
The same folks who trained up Sadr and his "Army of the Mahdi" were the same ones who helped get AQ up and running.
I think Imad Mughniyeh used to run Qods.
Tariq al-Qods.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0%2C2763%2C1188061%2C00.html
"Last June Mr Sadr brought these irregulars together as the Mahdi Army. Mahdi is Arabic for "the promised one" or "divinely guided one", and for Shias, much more so than for Sunnis, is a figure equivalent to Christ's return on Judgment Day. One Islamic tradition speaks of fighters arriving from the east bearing black flags to slaughter unbe lievers, when the Mahdi would appear. Various figures down the centuries claimed to be the Mahdi, the one familiar in Britain being the Sudanese leader who killed General Gordon."
http://cobalt.carebridge.org/TIRR/D-TIRR162.htm#_Iranian_Figure_Says_Revolution_Guar
Iranian Figure Says Revolution Guard Trains Muqtada al-Sadr's Supporters on Fighting Techniques
Date 09 Apr 04
Sender
FBIS
London: Al-Sharq al-Awsat (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic 09 Apr 04 [Report by Ali Nuri Zadah: "Iranian Source: Revolution Guard Trains 1,000 Muqtada al-Sadr Supporters on Guerilla Warfare, Explosions; Reveals Training Held in 3 Camps Near Iraqi Borders and Was Accompanied by $80 Million in Financial assistance"]
A source in the Al-Quds Forces, which are affiliated to the Iranian Revolution Guard, has disclosed that three training camps and centers have been established on the Iranian-Iraqi borders to train members of the Al-Mahdi Army that was established by Muqtada al-Sadr.
In an interview with Al-Sharq al-Awsat, the source who recently returned to Iran from Iraq, then left Iran on a secret mission and decided to stay abroad, said that 800 to 1,200 Iraqi young men, supporters of Al-Sadr, have received training on guerilla warfare tactics, the fabrication of bombs and explosives, the use of light weapons, and on surveillance, monitoring, and espionage operations in the three camps that are located in Qasr-e Shirin, Ilam and Hamid that are adjacent to the border southern Iraqi governorates where the Shiites constitute the majority.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat has also learned that the Iranian embassy in Baghdad recently distributed 400 satellite phones to Al-Sadr supporters, men of religion, and students from Al-Kazimiyah, Al-Sadr city, and al-Najaf.
The Iranian source, known by the observers under the code name of Abu-Haydar said that the intelligence services of the Iranian Revolution Guard have dispatched radio and television transmission equipment to the Shiite cities and that Muqtada al-Sadr and his supporters are using this equipment. The source explained that President Khatami and the officials in his government refused to meet with Muqtada al-Sadr when he visited Iran last June. But the supreme leader Ali Khamene'i ordered that he should be well received at the request of Ayatollah Kazim al-Ha'iri, the spiritual godfather of Muqtada al-Sadr and Khamene'i's teacher.
Khamene'i, after being chosen by the Assembly of Experts as the supreme leader of the regime, was taught by Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi, the former chairman of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the current chief of the Iranian Judiciary; and by Kazim al-Ha'iri who gave him his degree in jurisprudence [Ijtihad]. During his visit to Tehran, Muqtada al-Sadr met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Iranian Expediency Council; Brigadier General Murtada Reza'i, head of the Iranian Revolution Guard intelligence service; Brigadier General Qasim Sulaymani, commander of the Al-Quds Forces in charge of Iraqi affairs; and other officials beside Kazim al-Ha'iri, Mahmud Hashemi, and Ali al-Ha'iri, the son in law of Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, head of the Assembly of Experts. Ali al-Ha'iri is currently in Al-Najaf, where he heads the Khamene'i mission there and is in charge of disbursing monthly salaries to the students and men of religion who emulate Khamene'i.
The source that is close to the Al-Quds Forces said that more than $80 million have been disbursed to Muqtada al-Sadr over the past months as financial assistance, in addition to training his men and sending relief material, including food, medicines, equipment, and furniture.
The source said that the members of Al-Quds Forces and the Revolution Guard intelligence who are in Iraq lead the operations against the coalition forces. Also, these men have carefully studied and prepared the media campaigns by Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters against the senior Shiite religious authorities like Ali al-Sistani, Husayn al-Sadr, Muhammad Sa'id al-Hakim, and Ishaq al-Fayyad. The source cautioned against a plan that was prepared in Tehran and that Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters may carry out against al-Sistani and the other religious authorities who oppose the Velayat-e Faqih and the establishment of a religious regime in Iraq.