ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Containment of Iraq's powerful Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi) umbrella group of militias is a "long way off" from materialising, an independent analyst told Rudaw on Thursday. With strategic dialogue between the US and Iraq currently in motion, the role American adversary Iran plays in backing PMF factions is likely to figure highly in discussions. Iran-backed factions like Kataib Hezbollah were held responsible by the US for a spate of rocket attacks on American bases hosting US personnel — including one at Kirkuk province's K-1 base in December 2019 that killed an American contractor. Escalatory retaliation followed a week later, when the US killed deputy head of the PMF Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with Iran's Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. When asked if US troop presence and the PMF could co-exist in Iraq in their current forms, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an independent analyst and doctoral candidate at Swansea University, was pessimistic. "I think there would have to be a fundamental change...there's been too much bad blood as it were, particularly when the US ended up killing Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis...one side or the other has to change," Tamimi told Rudaw's Washington-based correspondent Roj Eli Zalla. Factions with the most might in terms of "military force and size" are "no doubt the factions tied more closely to Iran," Tamimi said, citing the Badr Brigades, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib Hezbollah as examples. Tamimi was part of a three-author team that produced 'Honored, Not Contained', an in-depth report on the PMF for the Washington Institute in March 2020 that detailed the paramilitary force's structure and whether its power could be contained by the Iraqi state. Despite governmental decrees that the PMF be integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces, most factions still operate with little government oversight. Calls for a distinction of PMF political and military lines, then their depoliticisation also lack the necessary impetus, Tamimi explained. "Demobilisation is definitely not realistic...there are too many interests in maintaining the Hashd," Tamimi said. "Because the Hashd has not broken the political-military distinctions, you have these vested interests or various actors having their own interests in maintaining the Hashd as their own means of influence within Iraq politically and having influence within various sectors...as long as it’s not depoliticised, measures such as bringing the Hashd fighters into the army, those prospects aren’t near anytime soon." It was hoped that new prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi would revitalise efforts to demobilize, or at least contain the group - but Kadhimi has since made statements in strong defence of the force , and decrees he's issued to punish PMF-affiliated groups have fallen flat, according to Tamimi. "I don't see Kadhimi being able to push through with major changes," he said. Maintenance of the PMF in its current form is being facilitated by government failure to professionalise the Iraqi Army and root out existing corruption, he added.
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