Foreign affairs 2019 09-10

Winning the Peace in Iraq

September/October 2019 167

Iraq time to comply. But i the administration stops granting waivers

and Iranian imports are halted, the resulting electricity blackouts will

certainly cause Basra and other Iraqi cities to erupt in violent protests,

as they did last summer in response to power shortages.

The United States has also demanded that Iraq disband several

Shiite militias with close ties to Iran. These militias are not a new

problem: in 2009, Washington designated the most powerful Iranian-

created militia, Kataib Hezbollah, as a terrorist organization for its

attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq; the group and its leader, Abu Mahdi al-

Muhandis, were also subject to U.S. sanctions targeting insurgents

and militias. But over the past ‡ve years, the issue has become far

more complex. In June 2014, a wave o mostly Shiite volunteers re-

sponded to a call from Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah

Ali al-Sistani, to help defend the country against ‘’‘’. Hundreds o

small militia groups formed, and in 2016, these groups were formally

recognized under Iraqi law as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or

–—˜. The Iraqi government o™ce set up to oversee the –—˜, the Pop-

ular Mobilization Committee, became a conduit for Iranian in›uence,

with Muhandis serving as the committee’s deputy chair.

Washington has called on Baghdad to disband both the –—˜ and mi-

litia groups such as Kataib Hezbollah, which it often treats as essentially

Rescue mission: Mike Pompeo in Baghdad, January 2019

ANDREW CABALLERO¤REYNOLDS

/ REUTERS

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