According to Zeyad, a purveyor of key Arabic websites in Iraq (see IraqSlogger: http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/1387/), the Mahdist outbreak of late January is just the tip of the iceberg. There's also the Silukiyin, a group which resembles the Hujjatiyah of Iran in hoping to spark the coming of the Mahdi; Ansar al-Imam al-Mahdi and al-Muwat`iyun, both of which claim that their respective leaders are the Mahdi's forerunners; the Ruh Allah group expects Ayatollah Khumayni (Khomeini) to return as the Mahdi; and al-Naba', whose members are said to believe that Muqtada al-Sadr is actually the Mahdi! (Wonder if his running off to Iran has undermined this idea?) 

      The historical situation in Iraq right now, with all these Mahdist and near-Mahdist claimants, reminds me very much of that in Algeria under French occupation in the mid-19th century. There, too, a myriad of Mahdist "forerunners" emerged to challenge the French in the name of the coming Mahdi before, finally, in 1879 one Muhammad Amzian actually, publicly proclaimed himself the Mahdi--whereupon French forces annihilated him and his followers (without, I might add, bothering to seek approval from the international community beforehand).
     No military or political solution is going to work in Iraq until this enormously powerful eschatological element in the region (both Sunni and Shi`i) is addressed.

A story about the Iraqi Mahdist outbreak in al-Ahram, Egypt's major newspaper (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/831/re4.htm), shows that accurate information on this movement is as elusive as the Hidden Imam himself: not only is the fellow accorded several different names ("Samer Diaeddin," "Diya Kazem Abdel Zahra," "Mahmoud al-Sirafi," among others), but he is said to be Iraqi, Lebanese, Sunni and/or Shi`i.  al-Ahram also repeats the false canard that Mahdism is only a Shi`i belief.
Are there any military folks in Iraq who can provide some light on this extremely important irruption of modern Mahdism? If so, please contact me.