Tuesday, February 24, 2015

We found the Khorasan Group, again!

Reuters has done more digging on that murky Khorasan group -- not the one that the Pentagon made up as an excuse to attack al-Nusra Front, but rather an Iraqi Shia Iran-aligned militia that has been doing some of the most effective fighting against ISIS:

One of the Shi'ite militia groups that best shows Iran's influence in Iraq is Saraya al-Khorasani. It was formed in 2013 in response to Khamenei's call to fight Sunni jihadists, initially in Syria and later Iraq. The group is responsible for the Baghdad billboards that feature Iranian General Hamid Taghavi, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Known to militia members as Abu Mariam, Taghavi was killed in northern Iraq in December. He has become a hero for many of Iraq's Shi'ite fighters. Taghavi "was an expert at guerrilla war," said Ali al-Yasiri, the commander of Saraya al-Khorasani. "People looked at him as magical."

The group's inspirational figure may not have been magical. But unlike the "Khorasan Group," this particular entity with a similar name does exist.