How Iraq’s Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi turned into an Iranian foreign policy instrument

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Updated 21 August 2021
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How Iraq’s Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi turned into an Iranian foreign policy instrument

  • Conglomeration of predominantly Shiite militias was first formed in June 2014 to defend Iraq against Daesh
  • Given its investments in its proxy networks, Iran is unlikely to relinquish control over Hashd, analysts say

IRBIL, IRAQI KURDISTAN: It is seven years since their yellow flag first appeared in the campaign against Daesh, the extremist group which seized swathes of northern Iraq and eastern Syria. After Daesh captured large parts of northern Iraq, including Mosul, in 2014, the fighters of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces, won the admiration of many Iraqis for heeding Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s call to arms.

Since then, the umbrella organization of mainly Shiite militias has, however, adopted a more sinister cause. Last month, a convoy of Hashd fighters mounted a show of strength in Baghdad’s Green Zone, the center of Iraq’s political life, and forced the country’s elected leaders to release Qassim Musleh, a Hashd commander close to Iran who had been arrested in the western Anbar province.

Musleh has a reputation as a brutal operator. In late 2019, thousands of mainly young Iraqis took to the center of Baghdad to protest against systemic corruption and Iran’s influence over their country’s affairs.

After days of protests, snipers believed to be from Hashd units took to nearby rooftops and killed dozens of people. Musleh and his Iranian sponsors are thought to have been instrumental in ordering the killings. His recent arrest was in connection with the May 9 murder of Ihab Al-Wazni, a prominent activist in the southern shrine city of Karbala.

“Many Iraqi activists have been speaking out against Iran-backed militias’ ability to operate outside the boundaries of the law, and it makes sense that the militias would then seek to silence anyone working to constrain their positions of power,” Emily Hawthorne, a Middle East and North Africa analyst for Strator — a RANE Company, told Arab News.

Kyle Orton, an independent Middle East researcher, believes Iranian-controlled militias in Iraq were behind the worst atrocities against anti-corruption protesters. “The Hashd is fairly clearly more powerful than the Iraqi security forces, both in its ability to control the social and street-level space, and the political sphere, with its control of key ministries and its effective veto-wielding bloc in parliament,” he told Arab News.

The Hashd was first formed in June 2014 to defend Iraq against Daesh after that group conquered Mosul.

In 2018, about 30 militias under the Al-Hashd-Al-Shaabi umbrella were formally included in — and paid by — the Iraqi security forces. It has a significant presence in the Iraq parliament through the Fateh coalition, which has more than 40 seats in the 329-seat assembly.

On the ground, Hashd units have repeatedly targeted Ain Al-Asad airbase in Anbar and even Irbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, both of which host US troops and personnel. The US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone has also been repeatedly targeted.




Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi fighters gather around the Tal Afar airport, west of Mosul, as they and Iraqi forces backed by local militia and a US-led coalition advanced in driving Daesh from the city in August 2017. (AFP/File)

While most of these attacks were with short-range rockets, the more recent ones have been carried out using explosive-laden attack drones, underscoring the evolving capabilities of such groups.

“The motivations for these operations are a confluence of issues,” Joel Wing, author of the “Musings on Iraq” blog, told Arab News. “Both the Hashd brigades and Iran want the US military out of Iraq. It would be a great victory for them if that happened.”

For Iran, proxy attacks by Iraqi militias are a way for it “to pressure the US over its (Iran’s) nuclear program and sanctions.”

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The array of units under the Hashd umbrella is bewildering. There are militias loyal to Al-Sistani, widely viewed as a figure of moderation and an opponent of overseas interference in Iraq. There are even tribal defense units, the so-called Sunni Hashd.

These groups exist to make the organization seem more diverse and legitimate, both domestically and internationally. “The reality is this is a ‘popular front’ tactic. All these groups are dependent and subordinate to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” Orton said.

Behind an elaborate facade of names and acronyms, Iran is sponsoring an array of more effective paramilitary groups, according to the analysts. “The most powerful brigades within the Hashd are all pro-Iran,” Wing said, identifying them as the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl Al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah.




Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, head of the Kataib Hezbollah, was killed beside Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad’s international airport. (AFP/File)

Iranian policy in Iraq has, however, had its share of setbacks. In January 2020, the US killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s overseas arm, in a drone strike. Soleimani was the architect of Iranian policy in Iraq and elsewhere across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Syria and Yemen.

Tellingly, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, head of the Kataib Hezbollah, was killed beside Soleimani as they were being driven from Baghdad’s international airport.

In May, Reuters reported that Iran had changed its strategy vis-a-vis its militia proxies. Instead of relying on the larger established groups, Tehran has started to form small elite groups that are more loyal and better trained to do its bidding in the region.

“This shift in strategy grants both Iran and established groups like Kataib Hezbollah plausible deniability whenever a smaller, likely linked group conducts an attack. It is indicative of a desire to protect the political position in Baghdad that a well-known group like Kataib Hezbollah enjoys,” Hawthorne, the Stratfor analyst, told Arab News.

Both Wing and Orton believe that the shift to smaller units masks a commitment to continued domination via plausible deniability. “Today, it’s unclear whether Iran is attempting to regain control of these factions or simply backing all the new front groups that Hashd brigades have created, to deny responsibility for attacks upon US targets in Iraq,” Wing said.

Soleimani’s death may well have caused Iran’s different power centers to experiment with divergent interests and objectives. The power centers range from the Quds Force, which organizes and trains Tehran’s proxy militias across the Middle East, to the Iranian foreign ministry.

“It has been reported that they don’t all agree on how to use their Iraqi allies,” Wing told Arab News. “The Hashd brigades were also competing with each other for a period to try to show which one was the leader of the resistance within Iraq, and the attacks were part of that.”

Orton sees Iran as adopting the same model in Iraq as it did in Lebanon in the 1980s, when it split Hezbollah from Amal, previously the dominant Shiite militia in the country. “The use of ‘new’ pseudo-groups or fronts, where they exist — some are entirely imaginary, existing solely online to claim recent attacks — is just the latest iteration of this effort to embed the Islamic Revolution in local conditions.”

That effort appears to be back on track following Soleimani’s killing. Hashd seems to be succeeding in spreading its control over broad areas of the northern Middle East. Musleh, the man at the center of the latest clashes between the militia and central government in Baghdad, is head of the Hashd in Anbar, traditionally a Sunni stronghold.

Hashd fighters have taken part in battles in neighboring Syria to help Iran prop up the Assad regime in Damascus. Hashd groups also proved instrumental in Iran’s ability to move weapons overland across Iraq into Syria.

Groups such as Kataib Hezbollah control important border points with Syria in both Anbar and Nineveh in northern Iraq, in addition to their own smuggling routes. “They are able to move men and material back and forth at will,” Wing told Arab News, referring to the paramilitary forces.

That said, Iran has been forced to change tactics in response to risks from the Israeli Air Force. Instead of shipping missiles through Iraq to its militia proxies in Syria, it has begun delivering smaller pieces of equipment along with advisers. These are much less detectable.

Given all that it has invested in these networks, the analysts are skeptical that Iran will relinquish control over them, even if it means a comprehensive nuclear deal with the US and Western powers that includes extensive sanctions relief for its economy.

“Iran will never ‘cut off’ any of the Iraqi militias, Hezbollah or the Houthis, because it cannot; they are integral, organic parts of the revolution,” Orton told Arab News.

“Any proposal in the nuclear negotiations for Iran to in some way trade its ‘proxies’ is a non-starter as such.”

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Twitter: @pauliddon

 


Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has failed in its mission, UN says

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Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has failed in its mission, UN says

  • Medics say hospitals are inundated with people wounded while trying to obtain food amid hunger crisis

The US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been a failure from a humanitarian standpoint, the UN said on Friday.

The UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the foundation over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
“GHF, I think it’s fair to say, has been, from a principled humanitarian standpoint, a failure,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told a press briefing in Geneva.
“They are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people where they are, safely and securely.
“We have the operation ready to roll with food and other supplies ready. We have them in the region; they are pre-cleared by the Israelis.
“We need the borders open to get in, and of course, we need the safety and security and some resemblance of law and order inside Gaza to distribute it.”
An officially private effort with opaque funding and backed by Israel, GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for more than two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
GHF claimed on Thursday it had distributed nearly 2.6 million meals on Thursday and more than 18.6 million to date.
The Palestinian Authority said internet and fixed-line communication services were down in Gaza on Thursday following an attack on the territory’s last fiber optic cable, which it blamed
on Israel.
“There was and still is a massive comms blackout,” said Laerke.
“If there is no communication, it really is damaging” for aid services, he said.
“There is an active effort to try to fix it, of course, and everybody is looking into that, because things kind of ground to a halt when these things happen.”
The distribution of food and basic supplies in the blockaded and war-ravaged Gaza has become increasingly fraught and perilous, exacerbating the territory’s deep hunger crisis.
The GHF said a bus carrying its staff to a distribution site near the southern city of Khan Younis was “brutally attacked by Hamas” around 10 p.m. on Wednesday.
Israel charged that Hamas was “weaponizing suffering in Gaza” after the US and the GHF accused the Palestinian group of killing its aid workers in the territory.
Asked to respond to the GHF accusation, the Hamas government media office in Gaza said GHF was a “filthy tool” of Israeli forces and was being used to “lure civilians into death traps.”
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed while trying to reach GHF distribution points since they began operating in late May, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
The agency said another 21 people were killed while waiting for aid on Thursday, adding that they were among 29 people across the territory who were killed by Israeli fire.
Contacted by AFP about reports of a deadly incident near an aid distribution point close to the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it had “conducted warning shots hundreds of meters from the aid distribution site, prior to its opening hours.”
Gaza medics have said hospitals are being inundated with people wounded while trying to obtain food.
At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital on Wednesday, the emergency department said it had received dozens of people who had been killed or wounded while waiting for aid in recent days, including 200 in a single day.
“Many Gazans went to the Nabulsi and Netzarim areas to receive aid and were shot at and shelled with tanks,” said Mutaz Harara, head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department.
But with few medical supplies and no operating theaters, “many patients died while waiting for their turn,” he said.
The war has caused major damage to infrastructure across Gaza, including water mains, telecommunication cables, power lines, and roads.

 


Cholera spreads to 13 states in Sudan, including Darfur

This picture shows the destruction on the grounds of a hospital in Khartoum on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 11 min 48 sec ago
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Cholera spreads to 13 states in Sudan, including Darfur

  • Funding cuts create overcrowded and unsanitary conditions that increase risks, WHO official warns

GENEVA: The World Health Organization warned on Friday that cholera cases in Sudan are set to rise and could spread to neighboring countries, including Chad, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees from Sudan’s civil war in crowded conditions.

The more than two-year-old war between the Sudanese army — which took full control of Khartoum state this week — and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has spread hunger and disease and destroyed most health facilities. Drone attacks in recent weeks have interrupted electricity and water supplies in the capital, Khartoum, driving up cases there.

FASTFACT

Dr. Shible Sahbani, WHO Representative for Sudan, called for humanitarian corridors and temporary ceasefires to allow mass vaccination campaigns against cholera and other disease outbreaks, such as Dengue fever and malaria.

“Our concern is that cholera is spreading,” Dr. Shible Sahbani, WHO Representative for Sudan, said in Geneva by video link from Port Sudan.
He said that cholera had reached 13 states in Sudan, including North and South Darfur, which border Chad, and that 1,854 people had already died in the latest wave as the dangerous rainy season sets in.
“We assume that if we don’t invest in the prevention measures, in surveillance, in the early warning system, in vaccination and in educating the population, for sure, the neighboring countries, but not only that, it can maybe spread to the sub-region,” he said.
He called for humanitarian corridors and temporary ceasefires to allow mass vaccination campaigns against cholera and other disease outbreaks, such as Dengue fever and malaria.
Cholera, a severe, potentially fatal diarrheal disease, spreads quickly when sewage and drinking water are not treated adequately.
Sahbani said that this posed a high risk for Sudanese refugees, including some who had survived attacks on a displacement camp in Darfur, and who are living in cramped, makeshift border sites on the Chadian side of the border.
“In overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, a potential outbreak could be devastating,” said François Batalingaya, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Chad, at the same briefing, describing the conditions for some 300,000 people stranded there with few aid services due to funding shortages.
The disease has not yet been confirmed in Chad, although a WHO spokesperson said that suspected cases had been reported in Geneina, Sudan, just 10 km away.
Sahbani also said that disease surveillance was low on the Libyan border and that it could possibly spread there.
Case fatality rates have fallen in recent weeks in and around the capital, Khartoum, thanks to an oral cholera vaccination campaign that started this month, Sahbani said.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said Sudan had become a grim example of impunity and the world’s indifference.
Fletcher called on “all with influence” to do more to safeguard civilians and to enable humanitarian aid to reach millions in the war-shattered country.
Despite repeated international pledges to protect Sudan’s people, “their country has become a grim example of twin themes of this moment: indifference and impunity,” he said in a statement.
Fletcher, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, underlined that half of Sudan’s population, some 30 million people, need lifesaving aid in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“Indiscriminate shelling, drone attacks, and other air strikes kill, injure, and displace people in staggering numbers. The health system has been smashed to pieces, with cholera, measles, and other diseases spreading,” he said.
The human cost of the war, including “horrific” sexual violence, has been repeatedly condemned, “but talk has not translated into real protection for civilians or safe, unimpeded and sustained access for humanitarians,” he said.
“Where is the accountability? Where is the funding?“

 


UN conference for two-state solution postponed, Macron says

Updated 13 June 2025
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UN conference for two-state solution postponed, Macron says

  • Postponed for logistical reasons as members of Palestinian Authority could not travel to New York

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that a United Nations conference co-hosted between France and Saudi Arabia to work toward a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians has been postponed after Israel launched a military attack on Iran.

Macron told reporters that the conference, which had been planned for June 17-20, had been postponed for logistical reasons as members of the Palestinian Authority could not travel to New York and that it would be re-scheduled as soon as possible.

“While we have to postpone this conference for logistical and security reasons, it will take place as soon as possible,” Macron said.


Activists stopped in Libya and Egypt ahead of planned march on Gaza

Updated 5 min 46 sec ago
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Activists stopped in Libya and Egypt ahead of planned march on Gaza

  • Organizers on Friday said authorities confiscated the passports of 40 activists at what they called a “toll booth-turned-checkpoint” being patrolled by riot gear-clad officers and armored vehicles

MOROCCO: Egyptian authorities detained more activists planning to march to Gaza in protest of restrictions on aid reaching the territory, while security forces in eastern Libya blocked a convoy of activists en route to meet them.
Demonstrators from 80 countries planned to march to Egypt’s border with Gaza to spotlight the deepening humanitarian crises facing Palestinians since Israel began blocking aid trucks from entering the coastal enclave in March.
Israel slightly eased restrictions last month, allowing limited aid in, but experts warn the measures fall far short.
The Global March on Gaza was slated to be among the largest demonstrations of its kind in recent years, coinciding with other efforts, including a boat carrying activists and aid that was intercepted by Israel’s military while on its way to Gaza earlier this week.

BACKGROUND

Friday’s detentions come after hundreds arriving in Cairo were earlier detained and deported to their home countries in Europe and North Africa.

Organizers on Friday said authorities confiscated the passports of 40 activists at what they called a “toll booth-turned-checkpoint” being patrolled by riot gear-clad officers and armored vehicles.
Others were detained at hotels.
The group’s spokespeople urged officials from the activists’ home countries to push Egypt to release their citizens.
Friday’s detentions come after hundreds arriving in Cairo were earlier detained and deported to their home countries in Europe and North Africa.
Before authorities confiscated their passports, the activists said they planned to gather at a campsite on the road to the Sinai to prepare for Sunday’s march.
They said authorities had not yet granted them authorization to travel through the Sinai, which Egypt considers a highly sensitive area.
“We continue to urge the Egyptian government to permit this peaceful march, which aligns with Egypt’s own stated commitment to restoring stability at its border and addressing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” the activists said in a statement.
As activists at the checkpoint languished in the heat, Hicham El-Ghaoui, one of the group’s spokespeople, said they would refrain from demonstrating until they were clear on whether Egypt would authorize their protest.
The planned demonstrations cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Egypt, one of the Arab countries that has cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists even as it publicly condemns aid restrictions and calls for an end to the war.
The government has arrested and charged 186 activists with threatening state security since the war began, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Many of them said they were protesting peacefully and collecting donations for Gaza.
Still, the severity of the crackdown surprised European activists.
Antonietta Chiodo, who traveled to Cairo from Italy, said those awaiting further instruction had been detained, interrogated, treated harshly by Egyptian authorities, or deported.
Alexis Deswaef, a Belgian human rights lawyer, said he woke up to dozens of security vehicles packed with uniformed officers surrounding Talat Harb Square, where activists had found hotels.
Members of his group snuck out of the lobby as security entered, asking an officer for assistance booking taxis to the Pyramids of Giza, where they’ve been since.
“I am so surprised to see the Egyptians doing the dirty work of Israel,” he said from the Pyramids.
He hoped there would be too many activists outside Cairo at the new meeting point for Egyptian authorities to arrest en masse.
In a divided Libya, Egypt-backed authorities stop a convoy
Meanwhile, an aid convoy traveling overland from Algeria picked up new participants along the route in Tunisia and Libya but was stopped in the city of Sirte, about 940 km from the Libya-Egypt border.
Organizers of the overland convoy said late Thursday night they had been stopped by authorities governing eastern Libya, which has for years been divided between dueling factions.
The convoy was allowed to cross from Tunisia to Libya but was halted near the front line.
The Benghazi-based government urged activists to “engage in proper coordination with the official Libyan authorities through legal and diplomatic channels to ensure the safety of all participants and uphold the principles of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
It said they should return to their home countries and cited Egypt’s public statements that marchers had not been granted authorization.
Organizers leading the overland convoy said authorities had allowed them to camp in Sirte and await further approval.
Their group, which includes thousands of participants, had already traversed parts of Algeria, Tunisia, and the western Libyan cities of Tripoli and Misrata.
Jawaher Shana, one of the convoy’s organizers, said it would eventually continue.
“We didn’t cross 2,000 km all for nothing!” she yelled to a crowd at Sirte Gate, referencing the length of the Mediterranean coastline the convoy had traveled.
The efforts — the activist flotilla, the overland convoy, and the planned march — come as international outcry grows over conditions in Gaza.
Israel has continued to pummel the territory with airstrikes while limiting the flow of trucks carrying food, water, and medication that can enter.
The UN has said the vast majority of the population relies on humanitarian aid to survive, and experts have warned the coastal enclave will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
Over UN objections, a US-backed group has taken control of the limited aid entering Gaza.
But as desperate Palestinians crowd its distribution sites, chaos has erupted, and almost 200 people have been killed near aid sites.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are on the brink of possible starvation, and 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority.
Israel has rejected the findings, saying the IPC’s previous forecasts had proven unfounded.

 


Palestinian ambassador: UK should recognize statehood to help end ‘deadly status quo’

Updated 13 June 2025
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Palestinian ambassador: UK should recognize statehood to help end ‘deadly status quo’

  • Husam Zomlot urges Britain to ‘right historic wrongs,’ show ‘political courage’
  • UN conference on 2-state solution could see states, including France, Canada, recognize Palestine

LONDON: The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has called on the Labour government to fulfill its manifesto pledge and recognize his nation as an independent sovereign state.

Husam Zomlot wrote in The Guardian that the move was “long overdue” ahead of a UN conference on the two-state solution next week in New York, and that it would help end the “deadly status quo” with Israel.

“I call on the British government to end this vicious path, right its historic wrongs and officially recognize the state of Palestine while the conditions are uniquely ripe to do so,” Zomlot wrote.

“Recognition is neither a reward for one party nor a punishment for another. It is a long-overdue affirmation of the Palestinian people’s unconditional right to exist and live freely in our homeland,” he added.

“Peace is not made between occupier and occupied. It can only exist between equals.”

Ahead of the UN conference on June 17, set to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, several states yet to recognize Palestine have begun discussions about doing so, including the UK and Canada. 

Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer came under pressure in the House of Commons on Tuesday for the government to recognize Palestine unconditionally.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently told Parliament the UK had held direct talks with France about Palestinian statehood, but added the UK wanted the move to amount to more than just a symbolic gesture.

But Zomlot wrote: “Recognition (should not) be subject to ever more conditions on the Palestinian side. Delaying recognition simply reinforces the deadly status quo, denying Palestinians’ equal rights until Israel consents, thus granting our occupier a permanent veto over the future.”

Ahead of the conference, the French government, which is also believed to be among those set to recognize Palestine, published a letter laying out political commitments made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, including that a future Palestinian state would require Hamas “laying down its weapons” and “no longer ruling Gaza.”

The commitments included holding democratic presidential elections within a year, and Hamas accepting nonviolence, disarmament, and the two-state solution. Abbas also condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the militant group, and demanded the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza.

Hugh Lovatt, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Guardian: “Recognition would certainly allow London and Paris to press the PA towards political renewal, including the holding of long-overdue elections, but it does not provide them with much leverage over Hamas which does not consider recognition by itself as being of sufficient value of itself to disarm before a peace agreement with Israel is reached.”

A senior diplomat from a Gulf state told The Guardian that Hamas had agreed to the proposal to end its rule in Gaza, but not to disarming.

Another Gulf diplomat told the paper: “Israel is seeking the total annihilation of Hamas and will not be willing to hand security in Gaza to the PA or a multinational force.”

The US government sent a diplomatic cable on Tuesday urging countries not to attend the conference, calling it “counterproductive to ongoing, lifesaving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages.”

But Zomlot wrote: “This is a moment of historic consequence. It demands moral clarity and political courage. I urge the UK to rise to the moment and act now.”