Combat Training, Courtesy of Fallujah

Two young men from Fallujah sat in a house in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, eating a meal of rice and stew prepared by local women.

They had come to this sprawling neighbourhood to give the Mahdi Army militia – supporters of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - the benefit of their experience fighting the United States Marines.

According to these men, the Shia militia needs all the help it can get.

"They don't know how to fight. We came to offer experience," said one of the “trainers”, who both declined to be named.

Fallujah street fighters have a solid reputation for combat skills, sometimes honed in training with the old regime's elite military units, and more recently put into practice in battles with US Marines.

According to these men, the Mahdi Army does not know how to handle weapons properly, and does not have no small-unit leadership. Instead, they fight in groups of equals, with no one giving directions.

Unlike Fallujah, where insurgents often use radios or other electronic means of communication, the Mahdi Army sends children as runners to convey military information.

Because of such deficiencies, the Mahdi Army has suffered heavy casualties and territorial losses. As a result, it withdrew from a number of districts in Sadr City under the American onslaught.

Members of the Mahdi Army agree about their weak points.

"We have many weapons, but we don’t know the right way to use them," said fighter Ali Abd al-Kadhem, 28.

For example, he said, his fellow-guerrillas place mortars on the roofs of buildings, instead of on the ground from where they are designed to be fired. As a result they miscalculate the settings needed to get mortar rounds to fall the correct distance.

Bomb teams use many ingenious methods to hide their explosives, but they don't pack enough to make an effective blast, said the fighter.

Sometime Mahdi Army fighters plant mines or bombs under the road surface and run a detonator cord to a nearby house. Other bombs are placed in hollowed-out watermelons. But according to civil servant Jawad Muhammad, 35, "This method does not seem expedient with American [armoured] vehicles, because the watermelon bomb is [too] lightweight."

Also, he added, "civilians, especially children, are more affected by it than the Americans."

Yaseen Badr, a fighter from the al-Falah neighbourhood close to Muqtada al-Sadr's main headquarters in Sadr City, described how one ambush went wrong.

Fighters set up a roadblock on the main road, hoping the tank would turn onto a side road where they had rigged explosives. They also set up an ambush, firing on the American vehicles from all sides to drive them into the mined street.

The plan went perfectly, said Badr, as one of the tanks drove right into an explosion. But it went out the other side again unscathed since the bomb wasn't big enough to do any damage.

One thing that the Mahdi Army does not appear to lack in Sadr City is volunteers.

Batool Ibrahim, 32, is one of a number of Sadr City women who recently volunteered to fight with the Mahdi Army.

"I learned to shoot with a small pistol which I bought for 30,000 Iraqi dinars [200 US dollars] two weeks ago," she said. "Today I am learning how to use rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and I received one from the Mahdi Army a few days ago.

"Our love for the Sayyid [Muqtada al-Sadr] inspires us to sacrifice our lives for him and not to fear death," she added.

She finished with the militia's chant, "We are the Mahdi Army and followers of Sadr, who are always victorious against America."

Zainab Naji is an IWPR trainee in Baghdad.