International organizations’ warnings of the Popular Mobilization militias have brought the latter into the picture again depicting it as a dangerous organization. 

 

There is also a distortion campaign that aims to mislead the world about the Popular Mobilization militias’ legitimacy by comparing it with other groups, such as the Sahwat and Peshmerga. 

 

During the last few years the Americans spent in Iraq, the military command formed a group of Sunni tribes consisting of Anbar citizens. 

 

The aim was to get rid of the terrorist al-Qaeda organization after the Americans failed. At the time, CIA officials were quoted in the New York Times as saying that Anbar was a hopeless situation as the situation in west of Iraq has completely gone out of control. A force called ‘Sahwat’ was formed and it was ridiculed considering that all people in the governorate were suspects and that al-Qaeda - particularly the most dangerous branch which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formed and which we call ISIS today - has reached the peak of its influence. This al-Qaeda branch killed the Sahwat leader and fierce battles erupted and ended two years later after eliminating the terrorists. 

 

Back then, Nouri al-Maliki’s government objected to forming a sectarian tribal power because the Sahwat were Sunni and they feared they will turn into an armed force that opposes the central authority.  

 

Disbanded 

In the end, the Sahwat were disbanded by suspending financial appropriations and integrating a small number of them within the armed forces.

 

Theoretically, worry of a parallel force was justified in a country that was still suffering from a disturbed situation. However, on ground, the tribal Sahwat were eliminated and were not replaced by an armed governmental force to protect the west of Iraq. The result was that al-Qaeda returned and it controlled several areas, displaced thousands and murdered many. 

 

Maliki’s failure to compensate for the Sahwat brought back the cancer of terrorist groups which besieged Baghdad’s surroundings and seized Mosul, Baiji and other areas. This is a summary of the Sahwat. 

 

Other parallel force 

The other parallel force is the Peshmerga, an armed Kurdish force which operates in its areas following a consensus, with the state not deploying its armed forces there. As long as the Kurds have their special status in a semi-autonomous region, the Peshmerga will continue to protect its areas. 

 

The story of the Popular Mobilization militias is different than that of the Sahwat and Peshmerga. They were composed of a group of Shiite sectarian militias that existed before and enjoys the support of the authority as a part of quotas among rival Shiite religious powers. 

 

After Mosul fell into ISIS’ control and military commands fled the city, Iran intervened “to help” and directed influential political forces to weaken the system of governance which the Americans established. This includes weakening the army which they considered as part of the remains of Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, this is not true because ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein and after the army was disbanded in 2003, thousands of armed forces’ personnel were killed or expelled.