monday, july 27 , 2020. the washington post eZ Re A
BY LOUISA LOVELUCK
AND MUSTAFA SALIMBEIRUT — The killing o f a promi-
nent researcher in Baghdad has
sent shock waves through Iraq’s
government, underscoring the
high stakes of its fight with
powerful Iranian-backed militias
and exposing the potential limits
of the prime minister in taking
them on.
Advisers to Prime Minister
Mustafa al-Kadhimi have been
taken aback that violence could
reach so close to his inner circle.
Hisham al-Hashimi, who spe-
cialized in security affairs, was a
confidant to many of them, and
his assassination on July 6 drove
home the fact that few in Iraq
are untouchable.
Although the assassin has yet
to be identified publicly, Iraqi
officials say he is linked to one of
the Iranian-backed militias that
Kadhimi has confronted since
taking office in May.
Kadhimi has promised to rein
in militias operating outside of
the law, an effort pushed by the
United States, whose 17-year
military presence in Iraq has
been violently targeted by some
of these armed groups.
But it remains unclear how
far Kadhimi will dare to go in
taking them on over Hashimi’s
killing. While an investigation
headed by the deputy interior
minister to catch the killer is
underway, Kadhimi’s aides and
political allies say that identify-
ing who gave the order could be
too politically explosive.
“He wants justice, but his
hands are tied,” said one adviser,
speaking on the condition of
anonymity because of the sub-
ject’s sensitivity. “Launching a
full-blown investigation into
why this happened, well, that is
simply too dangerous for any
prime minister here.”
Closed-circuit television foot-
age of Hashimi’s killing outside
his house has been watched
across Iraq, the grainy video a
dark reminder of years when
militias ruled the street. The
gunman works quickly, shooting
the 47-year-old researcher dead
in the front seat of his car before
slipping away into the night.
In Baghdad, Kadhimi’s politi-
cal associates have wondered
aloud which one of them might
be next. Some have disappeared
from the airwaves. Others have
left the city or, if they were
already outside, said they would
not be returning for a while.
“Hisham’s killing was a mes-
sage, and everybody heard,” said
another of Kadhimi’s aides.
“They showed that no matter
how well-connected you are, the
militias can always reach you.”
Hashimi became a victim of
the escalating fight between the
prime minister and the militias,
part of a larger competition
between the United States and
Iran for influence in Iraq, say
experts on Iraq.
He was one of the country’s
foremost security experts, re-
searching the inner workings of
the Islamic State and various
Iranian-backed militias, and his
killing “could be interpreted as a
preemptive measure to weaken
Kadhimi’s hand going forward,”
said Ramzy Mardini, an associ-
ate at the Pearson Institute at
the University of Chicago, which
studies conflict resolution.
“There’s every reason to be-
lieve that Kataib Hezbollah an-
ticipates future conflict with his
government,” he said, referringto the most influential militia
group that Kadhimi has clashed
with.Targeting militias backfires
Iraqi militias, including sev-
eral with close ties to Iran,
helped the Iraqi military and
U.S.-led coalition battle the Is-
lamic State, culminating in its
defeat in Iraq in 20 17. This
earned the militias an official
role in Iraq’s security apparatus
as part of the Popular Mobiliza-
tion Forces (PMF), with govern-
ment-provided salaries and
weapons.
Ye t some of the Iranian-
aligned groups are accused of
continuing to operate outside
the law. They make money from
extortion and smuggling and
run a secret prison network.
Some of the armed groups rou-
tinely launch rocket attacks on
military and diplomatic facili-
ties linked to the United States,
increasing pressure on the
U.S.-led coalition to end its pres-
ence in Iraq as sought by the
country’s parliament.
The prime minister has made
a very public show of wanting torein them in, promising to in-
vestigate rocket attacks when
they occur, installing allies at
the top of Iraq’s security appara-
tus and targeting smuggling
rings that generate militia rev-
enue.
In an unusual show of force,
he ordered the arrest of 14
members of Kataib Hezbollah
on June 26, accusing them of
planning to attack Baghdad’s
Green Zone, a sensitive diplo-
matic and political area near the
center of the city, but the men
were quickly released.
Experts said that this raid,
rather than chastening the
group, has emboldened the mili-
tias, encouraging them to esca-
late attacks and resist govern-
ment control before Kadhimi
grows stronger. To some mili-
tias, Kadhimi’s aggressive
moves “add up to a prime minis-
ter with growing offensive capa-
bility,” Mardini said.
After a brief hiatus, rocket
attacks resumed, this time
claimed by shadowy new groups
that Iraqi and U.S. security offi-
cials suspect to be fronts for
well-known militias.The most recent rocket struck
close to the U.S. Embassy as
Iranian Foreign Minister Mo-
hammad Javad Zarif was visit-
ing the city.
Then, on Monday, a well-
known German art curator, Hel-
la Mewis, was snatched from the
streets by armed men in a
pickup truck. A government offi-
cial, speaking on the condition
of anonymity because of the
situation’s sensitivity, said the
kidnappers were believed to
have links to an Iranian-backed
militia. She was freed by secu-
rity forces Friday in east Bagh-
dad.
Adding to the pressures on
Kadhimi are the broken econo-
my he inherited, now made
worse by the impact of the
coronavirus epidemic, and a
lack of broad-based support for
any program to tackle that.‘Increasingly rogue groups’
In recent months, Hashimi
had become more outspoken
about the impunity with which
some militias were operating. In
his final article, published days
before his death, he argued they
could be brought to heel, though
slowly to avoid a “ bone-breaking
battle.”
As o ne o f Iraq’s most r espected
analysts, Hashimi had once been
well connected with major fig-
ures inside the militias. But the
U.S. drone strike in January that
killed an Iranian general, Qasem
Soleimani, and Iraqi m ilitia lead-
er Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis up-
ended the militia scene, accord-
ing to experts monitoring the
groups, changing how they oper-
ated and who controlled them.
So when Hashimi began receiv-
ing death threats from their
ranks in recent months, includ-
ing from Kataib Hezbollah, he
was at a loss how to respond.
“Whereas once he could call
Muhandis or [others] to better
understand and perhaps even
mitigate the threats he faced,
that option was no longer there,”
wrote Renad Mansour, a re-
search fellow at Chatham
House’s Middle East and North
Africa Program and a close
friend of Hashimi. “A ll of his
senior PMF contacts had gone
into hiding a nd could not control
increasingly rogue groups.”
Political analysts said the tar-
geted killing of Soleimani andMuhandis suddenly made it dif-
ficult for any one leader to con-
trol or speak for a fragmenting
network of armed groups.
Experts tracking the Quds
Force, the external operations
wing of Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard Corps, which supports
groups in Iraq, say that Solei-
mani’s successor, Ismail Qaani, i s
more hands-off, issuing broad
directives but not consulting on
day-to-day operations.
“Qaani is clever enough not to
try to emulate Soleimani’s lead-
ership style, which means great-
er delegation of responsibility to
the field commanders,” said Ali
Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the
Arab Gulf States Institute in
Washington.
Muhandis’s death has also
been keenly felt. His replace-
ment, Abu Fadak al-Mohamme-
dawi, took months to be named
and does not have the same
ability to forge a common posi-
tion among the groups, militia
sources and U. S. and Iraqi secu-
rity officials say.
“A nd so it’s harder and harder
to track everyone,” said one U.S.
official, speaking on the condi-
tion of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the situation.
“We’re seeing the impact of that
now.”
When rocket attacks or am-
bushes occur, they are claimed
now by previously unknown mi-
litia groups whose membership
is also unknown. It is unclear,
one Iraqi official said, whether
these are splinter g roups or e xist-
ing militias using another name,
and so reining them in “feels like
chasing ghosts.”
Kadhimi’s political associates
and human rights monitors say
they are s keptical about what the
investigation into Hashimi’s kill-
ing could achieve. At most, sev-
eral political allies said, they
expected a criminal trial for the
gunman, without delving into
who gave the order and why.
“We thought that these pens
and these voices opposing the
militias were a fresh start,” said
Aziz al-Rubaye, an Iraqi journal-
ist now based in Iraq’s Kurdish
region. “Hisham’s death showed
that the Iraqi state and its law
are just ink on paper.”
[email protected]
[email protected]salim reported from Baghdad.Killing of Iraqi government confidant shows Iranian-backed militias’ reach
iRaqi PRiMe MinisteR Media Office/ReuteRs
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi visits the family of a government adviser killed July 6. Aides
to Kadhimi said an investigation that exposes the power behind the killer is “simply too dangerous.”Race in America@POSTLIVE #POSTLIVEDiversity in Corporate Americawith Ariel Investments Co-CEOJohn W. Rogers Jr.Hosted by The Post’s Jonathan Capeharton Mon. July 27 at 11:00 a.m.To receive a live stream reminder forthis event, visit: washingtonpostlive.com