Iraq’s Shiite leaders move to sidestep state weapons push
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s long-running dispute over weapons held outside direct state control is entering a more complicated phase, with understandings emerging among Shiite political leaders that appear to favour “managing” armed factions’ weapons rather than disarming them and transferring them directly to state security institutions.
Under the emerging arrangement, weapons surrendered by armed factions would be moved into storage facilities belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), rather than to the Defence or Interior ministries or the Counter-Terrorism Service.
The proposal is being presented as a way of organising weapons and ensuring their use is subject to orders from the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But it raises questions over whether the arrangement would fulfil the government’s stated objective of placing all weapons under state control.
The PMF was formally incorporated into Iraq’s security and military system, but it continues to include factions with political and security ties to Iran, making the question of who ultimately controls its weapons politically sensitive.
A source in the Coordination Framework told Shafaq News that Shiite political leaders had agreed to accelerate passage of the PMF Service and Retirement Law before the end of September, alongside arrangements to manage weapons held by armed factions.
The draft is expected to be referred to parliament’s Security and Defence and Legal committees for further review before being brought back for reading and a vote.
The proposed amendments cover ranks and career progression, benefits for the families of personnel killed in service and wounded members, retirement arrangements and the overall structure of the PMF, including the number of brigades and its leadership.
They also address the status of personnel who joined the PMF during the war against Islamic State in 2014, including volunteers who were below the legal age at the time.
The legislation would give the PMF a more firmly established legal framework at a time when the government insists that the force is part of Iraq’s armed forces.
But the more contentious issue concerns what happens to the weapons held by the factions.
According to the source, the political understanding is that weapons handed over by factions would not be transferred to Defence or Interior Ministry warehouses or to the Counter-Terrorism Service. Instead, they would be stored at PMF facilities, even if the handover itself were overseen by representatives of official security institutions.
The arrangement represents a significant shift in the debate over weapons outside state control. Rather than moving directly from factional possession to the custody of state security institutions, the proposal would move them into an institution that is itself part of Iraq’s formal security structure but still contains powerful factions with independent political and security identities.
That makes “weapons management” a practical alternative to outright disarmament.
On paper, transferring weapons into institutional storage could bring them under a more formal framework. But it leaves a central question unresolved: who would have the final authority to remove those weapons from storage and order their use, and what guarantees would prevent them from being redeployed outside the government’s decision-making structure?
The issue is particularly sensitive because the PMF’s legal incorporation into the armed forces has not necessarily eliminated the political and security networks surrounding some of its constituent factions.
The arrangement could therefore shift the problem from multiple factional weapons stores to a single institutional framework without necessarily resolving whether the security decision-making process itself is fully independent of factional and Iranian influence.
The issue comes at a critical moment for Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government, which has set September 30 as the target date for bringing weapons under state control, coinciding with the scheduled end of the US-led Global Coalition’s military mission in Iraq.
Some factions have linked the future of their weapons to the withdrawal of foreign forces, making the issue part of a broader political and security bargain over Iraq’s post-coalition order.
The PMF Service and Retirement Law was approved by former Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani’s government in 2025 and referred to parliament, but was later withdrawn following disputes over its provisions.
The Coordination Framework source said the latest amendments would be pushed through quickly, with the legislative process accelerated ahead of the September 30 deadline.
But not all political figures agree that the deadline is settled.
State of Law Coalition member Zuhair al-Chalabi said on Sunday that efforts to bring weapons under state control remained unresolved and that September 30 was not a firm deadline.
The disagreement highlights the difficulty facing Baghdad as it seeks to balance its stated commitment to a state monopoly on arms with the political weight of the factions that form part of the country’s governing system.
Ultimately, the success of the process will not be measured simply by how many weapons enter storage or which institution holds the keys to the warehouses.
The decisive question will be whether Iraq’s official institutions have exclusive authority to order those weapons released and used.
If weapons are merely redistributed within the PMF’s institutional structure, the process could give the disarmament effort a more formal appearance without fully resolving Iraq’s long-standing problem of parallel centres of armed power.