Iraq militias churn out threats but little violence, for now

Though exactly what statements it was referencing was unclear, multiple actions taken by the government have met with militias' disapproval despite the current government having been formed with the strong backing of political factions widely deemed close to Iran.

Kataib Karbala's announcement came the day after reports that another such alleged group that called itself Kataib al-Sabireen (Brigades of the Patient) had also said it would begin "military operations" against the US forces.

Plausible deniability

Similarly, unknown groups that have claimed attacks in the past are believed to be fronts for well-known Shiite militant factions for the purpose of "plausible deniability".

The threats came as Iran was preparing to reopen its embassy in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on June 6. The rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was strongly supported by the previous Iraqi government under Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who muqawama factions widely loathed and accused of conspiring against them in cooperation with the US.

Very few attacks but is a storm brewing?

The current government in Iraq under Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani took office in October over a year after elections were held.

Attacks in the country carried out by Islamic State (IS) remnants have dropped sharply, attesting to an improvement in security.

Attacks by Shiite militant groups against the presence of Western forces in the country and those close to them have also been reduced significantly.

Al Sudani was staunchly supported by political parties enjoying close historical links to Iran, which are also closely linked to units within the country's Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Read more: Washington keeps watchful eye as PMF consolidates dominance in Iraq

The PMF was officially created in 2014 after a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for the purpose of fighting the Islamic State (IS). The core was derived from Iraqi Shiite armed groups long supported by Iran and who claim to be engaging in a holy war against the US and Israel.

Tens of thousands of mostly young men were recruited at that time. Most now receive government salaries, though Iraq declared victory over IS in December 2017 and there is little actual work for most of them.

Many in Iraq see the PMF as heroes. Others see them as a major danger to the future of the country.

When reporting from frontlines across the country since 2014, this journalist has embedded with the Iraqi army, interior ministry forces, Sunni tribal factions and Shiite PMF units - all of which played a part in the liberation of the country from IS.

The ultimately successful 2014-2017 war required immense efforts and sacrifices from Iraq and Iraqis. The US-led international coalition also provided multiple forms of support.

Now, however, the country has many young men who know how to carry weapons but little else. Some took part in major human rights abuses, multiple international organisations claim.

As one example, on 5 June Amnesty International issued a press release saying "Iraqi authorities must take concrete action towards revealing the fate and whereabouts of at least 643 men and boys who were forcibly disappeared in June 2016 by the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) in the context of military operations to retake Fallujah from the so-called Islamic State".

"To this day, Amnesty International has not received a substantive response detailing the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared," it stated

One young member of one of the muqawama factions from southern Iraq told this Al Majalla correspondent during a visit to his home in southern Iraq in recent months that, after having fought alongside the group for years, he had become disillusioned with it and especially with the actions the group had engaged in across the border in Syria.

He and others that fought alongside him on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border have been incorporated into the government-salaried PMF. He said that he is thankful to have a job and that he thus has, in any case, no intention of leaving the unit he is in.

Iraq's bloated military

In an opinion piece published in Foreign Affairs on 5 June, Michael Knights noted: "The PMF is set to grow from 122,000 to 238,000 paid members, a 95 percent increase in the number of state-funded militiamen in a country experiencing its lowest levels of violence in two decades."

Iraq has long suffered from bloated government payrolls. It also suffers from high unemployment and low education levels.

According to an EU-funded report by the International Labour Organisation released on 7 March, in Iraq "only 51 percent of boys and 45 percent of girls are enrolled in secondary education, with even lower rates of completion".

Knights, co-founder of Militia Spotlight, a research blog of the DC-based Washington Institute for Near East Policy, discussed in the op-ed the recent formation of "the Muhandis General Company for Construction, Engineering, and Mechanical, Agricultural, and Industrial Contracting", which he sees as a major risk to the future of Iraq and the entire region.

The company is named after Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who alongside Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed by a US air strike in January 2020 just outside the Baghdad airport.

"No organisation like the Muhandis General Company has ever existed before in Iraq," Knights wrote. "Its remit is effectively unlimited: it can work in any sector, as its full name implies, and is essentially an empty container through which Iran-backed militias can consolidate their control over the Iraqi economy".

"Soon after it was created," he added, "the Muhandis General Company received 1.2 million acres of government land along the Iraqi-Saudi border at no cost." 

Iraqi contacts within the "muqawama" factions did not immediately respond to questions sent by Al Majalla about whether their threats were in reference solely to US forces or whether they were including Nato forces alongside these.

Though the US is part of Nato, it does not lead the training mission in Iraq.

In early May, the Italian commander at that time of Nato Mission Iraq (NMI), Gen. Giovanni Iannucci, told Al Majalla that one challenge he had faced over the previous year had been "how to approach an army that was created in 1921, was the most powerful regionalarmy and is rightly proud of its culture and history".

This, he said, was especially difficult because "we do not distribute money, do not deliver equipment and do not provide tactical training" and thus it was not immediately clear "how to make NMI attractive".

"To tackle this challenge, we impressed upon our counterparts that reforming their organsations" and "modernising their education" would "inevitably take more time but, would in the end produce much higher dividends", he noted, stressing the "mutual respect" that had been built between the forces.

"We are working on modern education," he said, in part in investing in "the young Iraqi generations" and "offering young Iraqi personnel out-of-country courses and exercises" as well as "enabling Iraqi women to compete and have a role in the security sector".

"There is still a lot of work to do," the Italian general said, only days before he handed over command to his Spanish counterpart, "but based on my experience I see a genuine commitment from our Iraqi counterparts to move forward in this respect."

Commanders of PMF units and those close to them are often less full of praise for Iraq's other branches of the military and security forces.

Many PMF leaders have urged over the years that they be given greater control over the country's security, claiming their capabilities outweigh those of Iraq's Army and interior ministry forces.

One PMF commander in charge of an area near the Iraqi-Syrian border claimed during an interview with this journalist in Karbala in 2018 that the Iraqi "army is weak. It can't control anything", accusing it of being "under the Americans".