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Iraq after ISIS: Shia militancy and Iranian influence
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invaded Iraq in 1914. Sistani saw Iraq on the verge of another abyss, one that was even
more dangerous than the 2006-2007 civil war, and that he had to act to save the country.
After the fatwa, tens of thousands of volunteers rushed to army recruitment centres.
Due to the lack of infrastructure and state capacity to absorb these new recruits, the large
Shia Islamist political parties in Iraq, as well as offices of the Iranian-backed militias in
Iraq, took them on. It is difficult to confirm the number of Popular Mobilization forces but
estimates have ranged from 50,000 to 124,000.
In addition to the most powerful of the Iranian-backed militia groups such as the
Badr Brigade, Asaeb Ahlil Haq and Kataeb Hezbollah, there are now tens of thousands of
volunteers who operate under the command of the Hashd al-Shaabi Committee but who
chose not to join the existing Iranian-sponsored militias. These volunteers also answered
Sistani’s call but are affiliated to the holy shrines in Najaf and Kerbala, which operate
under the supervision of Sistani.
They receive little or no attention from mainstream media and many analysts who
focus on Iraq because they do not employ the same sophisticated media communication
networks and outreach tools that are used effectively by the Iranian-backed groups.
Whilst the Hashd al-Shaabi was an exclusively Shia force in June 2014, the
paramilitary organization now includes thousands of Sunni tribal fighters in its ranks
after a concerted effort by Abadi’s government to reach out to the Sunni tribes to
desectarianise the paramilitary forces and empower Sunni fighters to take the fight to
ISIS. In March 2015, Sunni tribal fighters from Salah ad-Din played a crucial role in
liberating Tikrit. In Anbar – where Sunni tribes have a long history of fighting against Al-
Qaeda in Iraq – it was local Sunni tribes themselves, together with local politicians, who
publicly called for Baghdad to send in the Shia-dominated paramilitary forces after the
Iraqi security forces suffered another major setback in May 2015 with the fall of Ramadi.
Saleem al-Juburi, Iraq’s speaker of parliament and the highest-ranking Sunni politician,
has stated that the official numbers of the Hashd Al-Shaabi is 124,000, and the Sunni
Arab tribal component is 17,000.
9
When discussing Sunni-Shia cooperation in Iraq, it’s important to note that the Iraqi
army itself is mixed. Both the officer corps and rank-and-file are heavily mixed. The
Minister of Defense himself is a Sunni and the US-trained commander of the elite Iraqi
Special Forces is a Kurd. So Sunnis and Shias are fighting side-by-side wherever the
Iraqi army is active even if we ignore the roles played by Sunni tribal fighters and Shia
paramilitaries.
Abadi’s reforms and popular protests
In summer 2015, as temperatures soared above 50 degrees Celsius with little electricity
provided by the government, Iraqis across the capital and south took to the streets to
condemn corruption and the lack of basic services. Patience was running thin and terrorism
was no longer an acceptable excuse to justify the government’s poor performance. The
spontaneous popular protests started in Basra and rapidly spread to Baghdad and the
9 BBC (2015). Iraqi speaker: Prime minister can’t control Shia forces.
BBC News
, 1 June.