Iraq faces off against pro-Iranian militia in Baghdad

A raid by Iraq security forces on some of their own members on Thursday night resulted in hours of uncertainty in Baghdad. Armed men from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) responded with a convoy through the city after members of Kataib Hezbollah were detained. 

Kataib Hezbollah is part of the PMU and thus part of the Iraqi Security Forces but it has acted as a rogue militia, firing rockets at US forces dozens of times over the past year. Iraq’s new Prime  Minister wanted to send a message by dispatching the black-clad Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service forces to detain the PMU members.

The question in the early hours of Friday was whether this could lead to violence between the PMU and other government forces. It didn’t. Instead the more hard core militias that are backed by Iran, and are  part of the PMU, de-escalated the situation and relied on their commanders to get the detainees transferred back to PMU control. 

This is apparently what happened, which means that a show of force by Baghdad to rein in the Iranian-backed group resulted in a kind of quiet deal where the detained men,  around 14 of them, would be held by their peers and investigated.

Iraq faces a growing problem. The PMU was  formed to fight ISIS and were a bunch of populist militias, many of them Shi’ite, supported by Iran. They openly were religious and sectarian. During the war they were needed because the Iraqi army was weak. But the US-led Coalition has helped train and mentor 200,000 members of the Iraqi forces now. That means the PMU could have been disbanded. Instead Iraq made them an official force between  2016 and 2018. 

They get government salaries. But even as they use weapons that are supposed to be in the hands of the government, and run secret prisons, have their own armories and tanks and vehicles, they are  supposed to follow orders. Instead  some groups like Kataib Hezbollah take orders from Iran and the IRGC-Quds Force. They have killed three members  of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and one contractor. The US responded by bombing them in December and March and killing Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January.

In June, there were six rocket attacks on the US embassy, the airport and US forces at a base. Baghdad decided to detain some Kataib Hezbollah members and rockets they were preparing to fire.  The show of force was a message: Stop eroding the government’s standing by attacking Iraq  bases where US soldiers are. 

But what comes next? Iran has blamed the US for the raids. But regional media is careful not to inflame tensions. It looks like the Iraqi Prime Minister, who just began his tenure, will try to replace key national security figures. He already brought back famed general Abdul Wahab al-Saadi.

The question is who will blink first. Will Kataib Hezbollah stop the attacks or take this raid to mean that it still has impunity. Will this be the first of more raids and attempts to sideline or divide the PMU. Baghdad wants to divide the good aspects of the PMU, loyal to Iraqi Ayatollah Sistani and the government, from the more extreme ones loyal to Iran. The PMU could take this as a signal that its power cannot be challenged. Its show of force, riding around Baghdad in trucks with machine guns, shows it means business.