How to Keep Iraq's Unruly Militias Under Control

Daniel R. DePetris

Security, Middle East

Prime Minister Abadi supports integrating the Popular Mobilization Units into the armed forces’ command.

The military capability and reach of Islamic State has deteriorated so much over the past year that the Iraqi government will now need to think long and hard about the day after. Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his ministers in Baghdad have focused most of their resources and attention on the immediate priorities of pushing Islamic State out of Mosul, consolidating the gains made by the Iraqi security forces, and preparing the international community with the immense financial burden that will be required to reconstruct the country once the war is over.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives took a major step forward on the “day after” question last month when it passed a law that Sunni lawmakers are vehemently citing as further proof that the Shia-dominated parliament is intent on dragging Iraq towards a sectarian future. Thanks to the power of numbers, the Shia blocs were able to ram a law through the parliament that would incorporate the roughly 140,000 fighters of the Popular Mobilization Units into the regular Iraqi armed forces. Prime Minister Abadi is fully supportive of the plan, calling it a much-deserved recognition of the PMUs’ instrumental success on behalf of the Iraqi state against ISIS. Sunnis who have been in the militias’ line of fire are naturally taking a much different position, a testament to the group’s often indiscriminate tactics on the battlefield and its habit of sweeping through liberated areas like a destructive freight train.