Sadr urges Hashd to stay out of elections, return weapons

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned no party should run under the banner of the Hashd al-Shaabi in the country’s upcoming elections and re-urged for Shiite militias to hand their weapons back to the state.

Iraq has announced provincial and parliamentary elections to be held May 2018 and it is forbidden for members of the military to hold elected office.

In a televised statement on Monday, Sadr advocated for not allowing Hashd al-Shaabi’s name to be used in the elections and preventing its leaders from running in the elections while in still their posts.

Sadr also called for the dismantling of “some unorganized forces within the Hashd al-Shaabi and … punishing some others in order to protect the position, name, and dignity of jihad, jihadists, and the blood of the martyrs."

In light of Iraq’s proclaimed end to the ISIS war, Sadr also called on his men from the Saraya al-Salam brigade, to hand over weapons they had received from the state to the Iraqi government and leave liberated areas for the Iraqi army to control.

He ordered the closure of most Saraya al-Salam offices and their deployment to Samara city in order to coordinate and cooperate with the state.

Sadr added that a segment of the Hashd al-Shaabi has to be incorporated into the army.

The Shiite cleric requested that government re-open the cases of the fall of Mosul in 2014 to ISIS and later the Camp Speicher massacre in Tikrit where an estimated 1,700, mostly Shiite, Iraqi cadets were mass killed by ISIS in June 2014.

Saraya al-Salam, like dozens of other paramilitias, operates under the umbrella of the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq. Sadr revitalized his Mahdi Army to form Saraya al-Salam during the rise of ISIS.

In early November, Sadr had also called upon Saraya al-Salam to pull out from Kirkuk after it fell to the Iraqi army and Hashd al-Shaabi militias, after the Shiite forces were accused of violence, forced displacement, and destruction in the city.

Sadr previously has said that the Hashd al-Shaabi must operate under the Iraqi army and weapons be state-controlled.

The Hashd al-Shaabi was formed after a fatwa by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the summer of 2014 when ISIS captured several Iraqi provinces. He urged civilians to take up arms and fight. There were formally brought under the umbrella of the Iraqi armed forces in December 2016.

While called "the pride of Iraq," the Hashd have also faced accusations of human rights violations, ties to Iran, and were unable to receive support from the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition.

Sadr urges Hashd to stay out of elections, return weapons

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