Earlier this month, I visited Baghdad to talk to politicians, Iraqi defense officials, and militia leaders about the problem posed by militias in Iraq. Most Iraqi leaders pay lip service to the problems posed by militias, but the more serious politicians and officials have thought deeply about how to regain primacy over militias largely unconcerned with loyalty to the Iraqi state.
First, some caveats: There is a difference between Iran-backed militias, many of which predated Iraq’s liberation, and the groups which arose in answer to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s 2014 call for Iraqis to defend their country against the Islamic State.
There is also a difference between local groups and those who deploy to regions not their own. Shiite militias operating around Tal Afar, for example, pose less of a problem than some Kurdish officials suggest, because they are more like a neighborhood watch operating within their own historical lands, rather than Iran-directed militias encroaching on others’ land.
Nor are all militias Shiite: Sunnis and Christians also answered al-Sistani’s call.
And, as much as the Kurds lionize the peshmerga, their militia, there is less difference between it and the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) than they would imagine. After all, more than a quarter-century after the Kurdistan Regional Government came into existence, the peshmerga still prioritize party and tribal loyalties above loyalty to national institutions. And while Kurds can point to the achievements of the peshmerga in fighting Saddam Hussein, the Hashd al-Shaabi has developed a similar status because of its victory against the Islamic State.
While the peshmerga’s public relations efforts led many journalists to suggest it was the vanguard of the fight against the Islamic State, it nonetheless collapsed much like the Iraqi army in initial days, abandoning the Yezidi to the Islamic State and subsequently sitting out the bulk of the fight. Iraqis lionize the Hashd because they liberated Tikrit, Beiji, Ramadi, Fallujah, and most of Mosul; the peshmerga’s role — including in Mosul — was largely defensive.
Many Iraqis also embrace the Hashd al-Shaabi, including Iranian-backed or directed groups, because they responded far quicker to the Islamic State threat than the United States did. When the Islamic State captured Mosul, then-President Barack Obama overruled staff members who wanted to respond immediately. Obama believed that his predecessors had rushed into military action to our detriment, and he wanted to use the crisis to pressure Iraq’s mercurial, corrupt, and conspiratorial Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Such logic may have seemed sophisticated and wise at the time, but the net result was a sense of abandonment among Iraqis as the Islamic State perpetrated atrocities against Yezidis, Christians, Shiites, and also many Sunnis. Hence, there is a widespread perception that Iran came to Iraq’s rescue when the United States would not. Iranian influence operations and media strategy has only amplified and exaggerated this belief among Iraqis.
In reality, it’s likely only a small fraction of Shiite militias are more loyal to Iranian instruction than Iraqi command. That’s still too many, especially as even Iraqis fear that militias with dual loyalties could transform themselves into an Iraqi equivalent of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Many Iraqis say privately they wish al-Sistani would formally and very clearly rescind his call as they fear that his failure to do so prior to his death could make it impossible to address the problem for decades to come. Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, however, won plaudits on July 1 for issuing an executive order to rein in the militias. Symbolically, that might be the right move but, in reality, it does little that Abdul-Mahdi’s predecessor Haider al-Abadi did not also order.
In my visit to Baghdad, all militia leaders praised the executive order and said they would comply. This should not surprise anyone — the militia leaders have all become politicians as well. But, when I asked specifically about how the executive order would affect recruitment and training, I was basically told “one thing at a time.” In other words, the Iranian-backed militias will continue to conduct their own recruitment and training, before folding their men into a more regularized Iraqi defense umbrella.
Other ministers said they feel constitutionally prevented from stopping such infiltration or that they feel tremendous pressure on the part of some officials to accept compromised, pro-Iranian individuals in sensitive intelligence and security posts, usually at the undersecretary level.
In short, there is a tendency in both Washington and Baghdad to accept declarations at face value, declare victory, and move on. The pro-Iranian militias like the Badr Corps, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib Hezbollah, however, are playing much more a long game. External pressure can be useful but, ultimately, it is essential that the Iraqis themselves stand up. Forty percent of Iraqis were born after the 2003 war and resent the corruption of the militias; most simply want a better life and an even economic playing field.
These young Iraqis are still underrepresented in government but will soon make their voices known. Still, absent al-Sistani speaking as forcefully and clearly now as he did five years ago, Iraq will continue to face a growing crisis that will require continued U.S. engagement.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
