{"id":465610,"date":"2018-05-15T10:57:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T10:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=465610"},"modified":"2022-09-21T06:26:14","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T06:26:14","slug":"what-iraqs-election-means-for-its-shiite-militias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/what-iraqs-election-means-for-its-shiite-militias\/","title":{"rendered":"What Iraq\u2019s election means for its Shiite militias"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend\u2019s parliamentary elections\u00a0in Iraq\u00a0were\u00a0the country\u2019s first<\/a>\u00a0since the Islamic State was militarily defeated in December, and there are hopes Iraq will turn a new chapter and move forward in its attempts to remedy challenges to its security, endemic corruption, and the polarization within its society and political elites.<\/p>\n

There are few certainties in an election in which close to 7,000 candidates ran for just 329 seats\u2014in a country where the political landscape has become increasingly fragmented. One near-certain outcome is the political ascendancy of Iraq\u2019s Shiite militias, the most dominant of which lead the\u00a0Popular Mobilization Force<\/a>\u00a0(PMF) and have extensive ties to Iran. This 100,000-strong umbrella militia organization of predominantly Shiite fighters was mobilized to fill the security vacuum that followed the Islamic State\u2019s seizure of Mosul and the subsequent collapse of the Iraqi armed forces.<\/p>\n

Since the war on the Islamic State started, the plethora of preexisting groups and newly formed volunteer fighters within the PMF have won widespread prominence for their battlefield successes. This has been helped by the decline in prestige of, and respect for, the Iraqi army, in large part because of its embarrassing collapse in 2014 but also because many in Iraq see it as a corrupted institution whose history is steeped in oppression and brutality.<\/p>\n

Shiite militias in Iraq have fought\u2014and suffered defeats\u2014against Iraq\u2019s U.S.-trained and backed military and were consequently marginalized at varying intervals. They operate as mafia-style organizations that engage in criminal activities, extortion, and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

The picture becomes complicated because of the remarkable manner in which Shiite militias in Iraq have evolved and the extent to which they\u2014and the institution of the PMF\u2014have maintained their autonomy, despite on paper being components of the Iraqi state that answer to the government. The Badr Brigade militia organization has controlled Iraq\u2019s Interior Ministry and its 37,000-strong personnel since 2003. Ragtag militias like Asaib ahl al-Haq have evolved into powerful sociocultural movements that have enhanced their political credentials and have shed their bloodied reputations by bandwagoning onto existing parties and institutions. These actors have formally integrated into the Iraqi state and have weaponized the Iraqi state\u2019s resources and its sovereignty (for international recognition)\u2014while retaining their operational and financial autonomy.<\/p>\n

An important misconception is the notion that armed groups are always a product of state failure and, secondly, that their existence will always be anathema to the state\u2019s recovery. Shiite militias are a product of historical animosities, long-term oppression and perceptions of injustices and denial of rights that underpins the collective conscious of Iraq\u2019s Shiite community. They are not anti-state, but instead seek a political order within the confines of Iraq\u2019s existing territories, albeit one that may be at odds with those envisioned by their rivals and Iraq\u2019s Western backers.<\/p>\n

At the very least, the Iran-aligned groups of the PMF\u2014Iraq\u2019s most powerful militias and numerically superior\u2014want to rebuild Iraq on their terms (and in partnership with Iran) as opposed to the terms and conditions set by the United States and its allies in the West.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, the infrastructure that enabled their rise after 2003 can also be attributed to the Shiite community\u2019s mobilization against the former Baath regime, especially from the 1970s period and onward. Shiite militias are ingrained in the communities and environments they operate in as a result of interactions that have developed over prolonged periods.<\/p>\n

The process and environment that enable armed groups to succeed do not take very long to emerge, but once established, they can be very difficult to dislodge. Even attempting to do so can result in the proliferation of armed groups, particularly where there are external powers involved in the conflict and whose own vested interests adds to their resilience (as is the case with the relationship Iraq\u2019s Shiite militias have with Iran).<\/p>\n

Studies<\/a>\u00a0also show nonstate violence cannot always be attributed to state failure\u00a0because reliance on the wielders of nonstate violence has been a common form of military development in states where decentralized institutions of violence have been a response to changes in the regional and international systems.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, the PMF looks set to become an institution that subsumes Iraq\u2019s conventional armed forces. Whether this is something Iraqis want is debatable, but it will increase Iraq\u2019s prospects of being engulfed in conflict for years to come. While there is widespread respect for the fighters who make up the various groups of the PMF, it is not lost on many within the Shiite community, Iraq\u2019s Kurds, Arab Sunnis and minorities that the leadership of the PMF and its Iran-aligned dominant groups have explicitly pledged allegiance to Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Khamenei and the doctrine that underpins Iran\u2019s system of governance.<\/p>\n

The ascension of the PMF will be further helped by a regional climate where Iraqi Shiites are confronted with what they perceive as existential threats to their communities. Iraqi Shiites have historically resisted Iran\u2019s efforts\u00a0to export its theocracy to Iraq and are likely to do so in the near future, no matter how much Iran invests its resources into the holy shrine cities.<\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s most powerful movement, led by Muqtada al-Sadr,\u00a0the Sadrist movement<\/a>, continues to build on the legacy of al-Sadr\u2019s father, Mohammad Sadeq\u2014the fiercely nationalistic\u00a0Iraqi cleric who prided himself and his movement on the Arab identity of Iraq\u2019s Shiites. That will ensure Iraq achieves something of an equilibrium where the balance of power does not shift too much in favor of either Iran-aligned groups or those that seek to move Iraq away from Iran\u2019s orbit of influence, for now that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend\u2019s parliamentary elections\u00a0in Iraq\u00a0were\u00a0the country\u2019s first\u00a0since the Islamic State was militarily defeated in December, and there are hopes Iraq will turn a new chapter and move forward in its attempts to remedy challenges to its security, endemic corruption, and the polarization within its society and political elites. There are few certainties in an election… Continue reading What Iraq\u2019s election means for its Shiite militias<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":465611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-465610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465613,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465610\/revisions\/465613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465610"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=465610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}