Juan Cole
Informed Comment / September 23, 2024
Ann Arbor – Tamim al-Hasan at Al-Mada newspaper in Baghdad reports that at a time when an imminent announcement is expected of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Iraqi paramilitary groups have declared their solidarity with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the struggle with Israel. Moreover, they are putting their drones where their mouths are, attacking Israel on Sunday.
In a rare admission, the Israeli army acknowledged on Sunday that it had intercepted two suspicious airborne objects coming from Iraq, but that there had been no casualties.
The attacks were claimed by the “Islamic Resistance of Iraq,” a coalition of three Shiite paramilitaries, who said that they had fired missiles and let loose unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at targets in Israel. They said that they fired “Al-Arqab” advanced cruise missiles. They also said that they had targeted a military base in the northern Jordan Valley using drones, as well as trying to strike at southern Israel. The Resistance group said they would continue to attack the strongholds of the enemy “at an increasing pace in response to the massacres committed by the entity [Israel] against Palestinian civilians, including children, women and the elderly.”
The Lebanese Hezbollah itself launched dozens of rockets at Israeli munitions factories in North Haifa on Sunday, as well.
In related news, influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a reduction in the status of the US diplomatic mission in Baghdad and for an Iraqi boycott of Arab countries that have recognized Israel.
The Islamic Resistance of Iraq comprises the Brigades of the Party of God, the Nobles (Al-Nujaba’), and the Brigades of the Prince of Martyrs. All three have had sanctions placed on them by the United States.
The Shiite militias that helped Iraq defeat ISIL (ISIS, Daesh) in 2014-2018 have been recognized as a sort of national guard by the Iraqi Parliament, which helps fund them and put them under the authority of the National Security Advisor, who is nowadays Qasim al-Araji, who hails from one of the groups, the Badr Corps. He is a former Interior Minister (equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security).
He oversees the groups making up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), including the Badr Corps, the League of the Righteous, the Imam Ali Brigades, and the Brigades of the Army of the Imam.
The three groups making up the Islamic Resistance of Iraq are technically part of the PMF, but they do not accept a command line to Al-Araji.
These paramilitaries typically also field political parties in Iraqi elections, with PMF-allied parties gaining 43 seats in parliament in the most recent elections — a significant bloc of the ruling coalition. Prime Minister al-Sudani is therefore beholden to them, and indeed is said to be close to the PMF — though he is closer to the Badr Corps and the civilian bloc of Nouri al-Maliki than to the Islamic Resistance of Iraq.
Al-Mada quoted former member of parliament Mithal al-Alusi as saying that he believed the US had pressured Israel not to retaliate against Iraq. He added that these attacks by the Shiite militias would make it difficult for Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani to maintain his government’s studied neutrality on the Israel-Hamas war.
The Iraqi government is said to be annoyed by the militias’ participation in the Israel-Lebanon fighting.
Abu al-Ala’ al-Wala’i, the leader of the Brigades of the Prince of Martyrs, said after Israel’s booby trap attack on Hezbollah (and anyone around a pager or walkie-talkie), “A flood of Iraqi human beings will come, crowding the borders and trenches of Lebanon. If Hezbollah loses a thousand martyrs, we will provide it with a hundred thousand heroes.”
Although these numbers are of course a vast exaggeration, a multi-national coalition of Shiite parties did help bring down the Sunni fundamentalist rebellion in Syria, and their sheer person-power shouldn’t be underestimated. The PMF claims 230,000 fighters, compared with little Lebanese Hezbollah’s likely 45,000. Iraq’s population is nearly ten times that of the citizen population of Lebanon. So an actual investment in the Lebanese front by the Shiite militias of Iraq would be significant.
On Friday, Iraq’s Brigades of the Party of God announced that an Israeli strike on Damascus had killed its member, Abu Haydar al-Khafaji, who had been forwarded to Damascus as a security counsellor.
Prime Minister Sudani is expected to announce a two-phase withdrawal of the 2,500 US troops in Iraq. The Iraqi parliament demanded this move in January 2020, but al-Sudani is the first prime minister to make it a priority, given his closeness to the PMF. A handful of troops will remain after 2026 to liaise with the 900 US troops in Syria.
Bonus video added by Informed Comment:
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the author of, among others, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
