Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq

The Hezbollah Brigades was announced in April 2007 in the southern Iraqi city of Amara.

These factions are the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Supreme Islamic Council, and the Mahdi Army, established by Muqtada Al-Sadr in 2003 to fight American forces.

The Hezbollah Brigades describe themselves as a "resistant Islamic jihad", according to their official website, Al-Kataeb believes that Al-Faqih's mandate is the best way to "achieve the ruler of Islam in the absent age", meaning the absence of Al-Mahdi, the 12th Imam according to the Shiite religious doctrine.

The Hezbollah Brigades are directly linked to Iran, where it sees in the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran as a "great achievement" and considers it a key stage to pave the way for the establishment of a "State of Justice, God, and a picture of Islamic ruler and Watheq."

The Brigades say they are working to thwart what they call the American-Israeli project in the Middle East, and their members were among the first armed men who fought in Syria alongside government forces following a wave of popular protests that swept the country in 2011.

The Hezbollah Brigades are not known as an organizational structure, whether military or administrative, as is the case with other major Shiite factions in Iraq.

The Brigades are estimated to be armed with 7,000 members, according to unofficial figures.

Because of the expanding area of battalions operations in Iraq and Syria, and its members consider themselves to be "dogmatic", the party leadership classifies its deaths in combat to four categories:

The battalions, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, carried out several operations targeting American soldiers in Iraq.