April 30, 2026
Iraq this week agreed on a new prime minister-designate, a relatively unknown player, who was blessed by the constellation of Shia political parties, power brokers, and armed factions who dominate the country.
Ali al-Zaid, born 1986, is relatively young businessman whose interests include media and supermarkets. He succeeds Mohammed al-Sudani after a weeks-long deadlock that followed the Americans’ threats to withold Iraq’s own money if it renamed former prime minister Nouri Maliki to the top post.
Adding to the tensions between Iraq and the US was the role of Iraq’s Iranian-backed Shia militias, who played a role in the war by the US and Israel against Iran. The shadowy armed groups launched barrages of rockets at Saudi Arabia as well as US and foreign bases in the region.
In an interview with badlands, scholar Inna Rudolf said wrestling with the power, influence, and unauthorized actions of the armed groups has become Iraq’s top political issues. The author of the soon-to-be-published book, “Iraq’s Shia Warriors: From Battlefield to Pariliament,” said most of the main Shia parties boast armed groups.
Many of those armed groups are now officially part of the government, integrated into the security forces as part of the Popular Mobilization Forces. But only a few are involved in stirring up trouble in Iraq and the region, she said.
Those “rogue” militias are part of the unofficial Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a shadowy network operating outside of the official channels. “Of course it’s rogue elements,” she said. “The moment you take for yourself the decision to decide on matters of war and peace, you’re already violating the mandate of the executive and even the very philosophy, the institutional DNA behind” the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Rolf said the attacks launched by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq were widely condemned by the Iraqi government and rejected by ordinary people. “From the mood on the Iraqi streets, there was very little enthusiasm of seeing the country dragged again in ill-timed geopolitical escalation,” she said. “And in a way, seeing the Iraqi people paying the price for whatever score settling process is going on,”
She noted the ironies and complexities of Iraq’s predicament. For example, when the Islamic Resistance of Iraq fired upon bases hosting US forces in the first weeks of the war, it also targeted members of the very same Popular Mobilization Forces with which it is affilated.
When Americans fired back and killed members of the Iran-backed rogue group Katayeb Hezbollah in retalation, they were given state funerals, replete with the Iraqi flag.
Katayeb Hezbollah and a few other militias seem to act on their own accord, blatantly thumbing their noses at the state’s monopoly on violence.
“Ketayeb Hezbollah has shown very little restraints when it comes to really claiming and admitting to having overstepped the mandates of engaging in operations that do not come like from the directives of the commander-in-chief,” she said,
But Rolf said US forces attacks on the armed groups also undermine the authority of the Iraqi state by reinforcing the idea that a foreign power can violate the country’s sovereignty.
“To engage militarily with the rogue groups, one really has to think twice and triple and to do more in coordination with the Iraqi government,” she said. “Because like the more talking points you hand to, let’s say, the speaker of Katayeb Hezbollah or one of the other groups. The harder you make it for the commander-in-chief to really assert himself and to speak with confidence that, ‘No, I am the one authority who can guarantee that I protect Iraq’s security forces.’”
Please watch or listen to this fascinating discussion.
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