ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has promised to return former fighters of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic) to service even if requires amendments to the entire budget law, state newspaper al-Sabah reported on Wednesday.
Kadhimi met with MPs representing the al-Fatih coalition, led by PMF leader Hadi al-Ameri.
According to al-Sabah, Kadhimi said that when his government prepared the budget law, it included budget allocations for the return of former PMF members whose contracts had been rescinded, but the parliament removed those allocations to reduce expenditure.
The PM directed the "formation of a working team from the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Finance and the [Popular] Mobilization Authority to reach a fair solution that guarantees a speedy return for them,” it added.
"If the matter reaches a dead end legally, the budget law will be amended as soon as possible and sent to the parliament for another vote,” Kadhimi said, adding that PMF fighters "have done a favor for this country."
The PMF was established in 2014 following a fatwa – of religious call to action – from Iraq’s highest Shiite religious authority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to fight the Islamic State (ISIS).
Although the PMF has been brought under the umbrella of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and measures have been taken to fully integrate the units into Iraq’s official military apparatus, many continue to act independently, accused of committing human rights violations, along with corruption.
There are no official figures for the number of PMF fighters, but the PMF itself has said it numbers up to 150,000 people.
“The number of actual Hashd fighters is 48,0000, but their leaders receive the salaries of 130,000; a difference of 82,000!” Former MP Faeq al-Sheikh Ali tweeted in May 2020.
Dozens of PMF fighters who had their contracts rescinded organize limited-scale demonstrations from time to another in Baghdad and other provinces. When PMF head Faleh al-Fayyad announced in April that PMF salaries had been raised to 1.4 million dinars each (980$), protests began escalating.
On May 2, dozens of former PMF members demonstrated near the Finance Ministry building in Baghdad, and tried to break into it after clashing with security forces, which prompted the authorities to evacuate and close the building.
The former Iraqi government, headed by Haider al-Abadi, fired many PMF members due to their failure to serve during the battles against ISIS.
In May 2018, Abadi attacked the PMF, saying that there are "corrupt" leaders in it who tamper with the salaries of the PMF members, and do not allow the government to audit the numbers, records, and salaries of fighters and affiliates.
Qassim al-Zubaidi, a former PMF finance official, was assassinated in Baghdad in April 2018. After his death, Abadi revealed that he received a call from Zubaidi days before his assassination, trying to reveal corruption in distribution of PMF salaries in the committee.
"Do the corrupt imagine that they are intimidating us? ... You will pay the price," Abadi said, promising to bring the corrupt to justice, but that never happened.
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