Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s new prime minister as of May 12, has already announced a bold intention. In a short government manifesto he submitted to the Iraqi Parliament, Kadhimi emphasized his plans to “impose the state’s prestige” by bringing armed groups under government control. To observers of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the manifesto’s meaning is clear: the damage to the state’s “prestige” has, after all, come mainly from pro-Iranian militant groups who answer to the commanders of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), rather than to Iraq’s commander in chief.
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias such as Kataib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, among others, operate outside the jurisdiction of the Iraqi state. They are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella military organization that is nominally under Iraqi command but that in fact plays an integral part in projecting Iranian power throughout the region.
