Will Iraq integrate popular mobilization forces into the state? | News Israel-Iran Conflict

On July 27, two mainly Shiite popular mobilization forces (PMF) brigades stormed the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture, coming up against the police.

Although the incident can be considered a power struggle for the position, it also indicates a certain degree of audacity on the part of the brigades, which ended up killing a police officer.

The brigades were called by Ayad Kadhim Ali after being rejected as head of the office of the ministry in the Karkh district of Baghdad, according to Mehmet Alaca, an expert in Iraqi Shiite militias. Ali is affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, like the brigades that attacked the ministry, analysts said in Al Jazeera.

The incident is considered a decisive test to know if the Iraqi state can hold the PMF factions responsible for violation of the law.

The Iraqi government argues that the adoption of new legislation – which would fully integrate the PMF into the state – would help them do so. Supporters of the bill argue that he would encourage the PMF to act within the limits of the law, but detractors fear giving legal coverage to the militias, which are already too strong.

The PMF

The PMF, also known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella organization of mainly Shiite armed groups, some of which have close links with neighboring Iran. Some of these groups emerged for the first time during the Iraqi resistance to the American occupation.

Asa’ib Ahl al-haq, for example, separated from Jaish Al-Mahdi, formerly the dominant branch of the Shiite rebellion, in 2007. The group received Iranian support to become a large electric broker in Iraq and then intervened in the civil war of Syria to support the president of the time Bashar al-Assad while he was trying to crush a popular rebellion.

Kataib Imam Ali is another group, although smaller, in the PMF which would have received training from the Lebanese group Hezbollah in Iran and also sent combatants to Syria at the height of his war.

Like Kataib Imam Ali, most PMF factions were formed after the Grand Ayatollah Iraqi Al-Sistani published a Fatwa in 2014, urging all valid men to join the State to defend Iraq from EIIL (ISIS).

At the time, ISIL controlled large area of territory in Syria and Iraq, equivalent to the size of England. The Isil even captured the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared a “caliphate” from there.

In 2016, the Iraqi Parliament had adopted a law that recognized the PMF as a component of national security of the state.

But the law lacks clarity around command and control and budgetary surveillance, and it has not prevented certain groups from taking unilateral measures to attack American assets and soldiers stationed in the country.

In 2024, for example, the PMF obtained a budget of 3.4 billion dollars, which exceeded the total budget of Lebanon.

Although the figure is small compared to the $ 21.1 billion allocated to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense the same year, it is important that the State allocated to an organization for which it did not even have a specific membership list.

Each registered PMF faction subjects a list of names to be paid, and these lists are then examined by the Ministry of Finance. However, PMF leaders often intervene to push the payments by undisputed, according to a report in 2021 of the Chatham House Think Tank.

Estimates suggest that there are 238,000 PMF fighters.

The reception on the one hand of the state budget helped the PMF to its quest to make a mark as a legitimate entity in Iraq.

“From the start, the PMF was categorical about the fact that it was part of the state and not the militia,” said Renad Mansour, an expert in Iraq with Chatham House.

Over the past 10 years, PMF factions have created political wings, organized parliamentary elections and have had access to state lucrative money after obtaining significant administrative positions in key ministries.

However, while they accumulate power, some used their weapons against the state to protect their patronage networks and their influence on key ministries.

In 2021, PMF groups linked to Iran launched a drone at the home of the Minister of the Mustafa al-Kadhimi, would have declared an attempted upheaval of the government after losing many parliamentary seats and therefore access to state money during the recent elections, said Alaca, the Iraqi militias expert Shia.

The new law

The Iraqi government wrote the new law in March. This would give all PMF factions, a stable employee and would carry them under the control of Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani as commander-in-chief

Supporters of the bill mainly include a block of five Shiite parties known as the coordination framework.

“The argument pushed by those who pleads for the law is that by offering an institutional refuge for armed factions under a reformed PMF, it would encourage them to comply with the national chain of command – thus reducing their appetite to take measures outside the state,” told Nana Rudolf, an expert in the PMF and a main researcher King’s College.

More importantly for the PMF, the law offers it an essential legal coverage at a time when the United States and Israel threaten to target the groups they consider as Iranian attorney.

This would grant the members of the PMF full access to intelligence, what some support is a risky proposition because intelligence could be transmitted to Iran.

Analysts, however, said that many PMF factions would be more concerned with their power base and their assets than Iranian interests.

During the Israel-Iran war in June 12 days, PMF groups did not attacked American assets or staff, probably for fear of giving Israel a pretext to attack their command structure and their resources like Israel against Hezbollah, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute.

“I would say that the stronger and more integrated PMF groups are those who have practiced the restraint and say the little ones [pro-Iran] Factions not to get involved in the regional conflict [between Iran and Israel]”Said Mansour.

The follow -up of the incident of the Ministry of Agriculture will test the will of the PMF commanders to cooperate with the State to hold its own responsible members, as well as the seriousness of the State to hold the members of the responsible PMF, according to Rudolf.

She said that Al-Sudani has shown a “strong will” by referring to all the persons involved in the judicial power raid and by calling for the training of an examination committee to investigate the “negligence in leadership and control duties” within the PMF.

“The Administration of Sudani wants to demonstrate power over the PMF and [to prove] The fact that all those who affiliated there not only have the same privileges as members of the security forces, but must respect the same code of conduct, “Rudolf told Al Jazeera.

Pressures against the new law

Not everyone in Iraq does not support the integration of the PMF, said Zeidon al-Kinani, an expert in Iraq and auxiliary instructor at the University of Georgetown in Qatar.

He said many PMF factions had harmed hundreds of young demonstrators who demonstrated against what they considered a corrupt political elite in 2019.

Consequently, civil society is wary of seeing all the PMF factions given the same privileges as the army and the police of Iraq and would prefer that the government only absorb those which have no close links with Iran, said Al-Kinani.

US officials also put pressure on Iraq to not adopt the law with the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, would have told Al-Sudani that the law would “institutionalize Iranian influence and armed terrorist groups undermine the sovereignty of Iraq”.

The former and current Iraqi officials argued that the State could not dissolve the PMF and that any attempt to do so could trigger sectarian violence.

Al-Kinani warned that the United States could trigger a conflict by making unreasonable requests without helping Iraq execute them.

“Regarding Iraq, the United States makes drastic requests [without] Support the Iraqi government or civil society to ensure their protection against any repercussions, “he told Al Jazeera.