Tensions mount ahead of Iraq disarmament deadline

Twin goals

The problem of armed forces operating parallel to the Iraqi state can no longer be understood solely as a failure of the political system to monopolise organised violence through its official institutions. However, that failure remains one of the clearest signs of state fragility. Indeed, establishing an armed force parallel to the state may have been among the principal purposes envisaged by the domestic and external actors that created these formations, ostensibly to protect their own power.

Weapons beyond state control have another function, rooted in the strategic thinking of Iranian decision-makers and central to Iran’s conception of national security. These armed groups form part of the ‘rings of fire’ with which Tehran seeks to encircle its regional adversaries. Should political rivalry and conflict turn into war, they would become among Iran’s most important instruments.

This became particularly evident after the 12-day war and amid the continuing conflict between Iran, the US, and Israel. Iran’s influence and dominance in Syria were dealt a severe blow following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In parallel, Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally, has been badly weakened. This has left Tehran with the Houthis in Yemen and Iraq’s armed factions. So far, Iran has managed both arenas by the same principle: opening support fronts and drawing them into confrontation on terms chosen by Tehran. 

Since the outbreak of war between Iran, the US, and Israel, the external role of Iraq’s armed factions has increasingly embarrassed the Iraqi state and encroached on the government’s authority to decide matters of war and peace. The previous government, and now the current one, have found themselves receiving formal protests from neighbouring Gulf states over drone and missile attacks launched from Iraqi territory against vital installations and energy infrastructure.

As so often happens, the government responds by forming investigative committees whose work usually leads nowhere. The armed groups responsible for such attacks are seldom identified, and their names are rarely made public.

The factions behind attacks on countries across the region have therefore sent the Iraqi government a clear message: they can embarrass it before domestic public opinion and states with which Baghdad has strategic interests simply by choosing when to launch armed attacks against Iraq’s neighbours.

The responses to those attacks, including Saudi and US military operations against PMF headquarters, together with warnings from Syria, Jordan, and Gulf states that they would respond with force to attacks launched against their territory by armed groups in Iraq, may now give al-Zaidi’s government useful leverage. It can use this regional pressure to confront armed factions whose activities undermine the state’s standing with its neighbours and its authority over security and foreign policy.

Seven Arab states—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and Syria—have taken a clear position against attacks launched from Iraq targeting countries in the region, their facilities, and infrastructure. They have described such attacks as acts of aggression.

Successive Iraqi governments have worked hard to deepen economic and strategic partnerships with all seven countries. During the present war, however, the government’s inability to preserve the gains made in previous years has become increasingly apparent. 

One country, two faces

The heart of the problem lies in a contradiction at the centre of Iraq’s relations with its neighbours. The Iraqi government approaches Arab and regional countries through partnership and cooperation, seeking mutual interests, and expects them in return to treat the Iraqi government as the state’s official representative. Yet when armed groups issue threats against those same countries, Iraq appears to have two heads rather than one. 

Iraqi officials regularly visit neighbouring states, sign memoranda of understanding, and deepen economic and security cooperation. Alongside this diplomacy is a very different discourse: speeches inciting hostility and threatening the use of force against those same countries.

Political parties and government officials have compounded the problem through evasive terminology. Their insistence on distinguishing between the PMF, formally subordinate to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the ‘armed factions’ operating within Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ is no longer credible or convincing. The distinction now serves mainly to highlight the confusion in Iraq’s political discourse.

Iraq’s political actors remain in a state of denial, unwilling to acknowledge the reality around them. Armed factions openly declare that the time has come for their weapons to enter the battle, while proclaiming allegiance to a cause that transcends state borders and does not recognise the principle of sovereignty. The government, meanwhile, continues to reiterate its commitment to ‘restricting weapons to the hands of the state’.

Many armed groups either genuinely believe, or deliberately promote, the notion that their weapons are necessary to confront an external danger that might emerge from political change in Syria. They invoke memories of the fall of three Iraqi provinces in 2014 to the Islamic State (IS). They also argue that they must defend Iraq for as long as the government itself remains unable to protect the country from attack.

A consequential deadline

For al-Zaidi’s government, which has shown considerable determination to bring the country’s weapons under state control, the remaining option may be a decisive confrontation to restore state authority and its ability to impose security. But a fight with forces operating parallel to the state would almost certainly exact a heavy price. 

If the government falters or retreats after 30 September—the deadline for bringing weapons under state control—the consequences could be profound. Such a reversal could damage its standing with the United States, as well as regional neighbours. Restoring the Iraqi state and ending the persistent grey zone between state and non-state power may ultimately come at a high cost, but whether it is a cost Iraqis are prepared to pay remains to be seen.