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Killing of Iraqi government confidant exposes perils of showdown with
Iranian-backed militias
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on a condolence visit to the
family of the late government adviser and political analyst Hisham al-Hashimi
on July 8. (Iraqi Prime Minister Media Office/Reuters)
By
Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim
July 25, 2020 at 1:00 p.m. GMT+2
BEIRUT — The killing of a prominent 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
specialized in security affairs, was a confidant to many of them, and his
assassination on July 6 drove home 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 vowed 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 identifying 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 due to the sensitivity of the subject. “Launching
a full-blown investigation into why this happened, well, that is simply too
dangerous for any prime minister here.”
Closed-circuit television footage of Hashimi’s murder 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 political 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 message, 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.”
Men clad in masks because of the coronavirus pandemic walk past a
mourning tent bearing a poster of Hashimi in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. (Ahmad
Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)
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, researching the
inner workings of both 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 associate at the Pearson
Institute at the University of Chicago, which studies conflict resolution.
“There’s every reason to believe that Kataib Hezbollah anticipates
future conflict with his government,” he said, referring to the most
influential militia group that Kadhimi has clashed with.
Attempt to rein in militias backfires
Iraqi militias, including several with close ties to Iran, helped the
Iraqi military and U.S.-led coalition battle the Islamic State, culminating in
its defeat in Iraq in 2017. This earned the militias an official role in Iraq’s
security apparatus as part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), with
government-provided salaries and weapons.
Yet some of the Iran-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 routinely launch rocket attacks
on military and diplomatic facilities linked to the United States.
The prime minister has made a very public show of wanting to rein them
in, vowing to investigate rocket attacks when they occur, installing allies at
the top of Iraq’s security apparatus and targeting smuggling rings that
generate militia revenue.
In a July 20 visit, Kadhimi waves to residents of Tarmiyah, where a
commander of an Iraqi army brigade was killed the previous week in an attack
blamed on the Islamic State group. (Khalid Mohammed/AP)
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 diplomatic 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 militias, encouraging them to escalate attacks and resist
government control before Kadhimi grows stronger. To some militias, Kadhimi’s
aggressive moves “add up to a prime minister with growing offensive
capability,” Mardini said.
After a brief hiatus, rocket attacks resumed, this time claimed by
shadowy new groups that Iraqi and U.S. security officials suspect to be fronts
for well-known militias. The most recent rocket struck close to the U.S.
Embassy as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was visiting the city.
Then, on Monday, a well-known German art curator, Hella Mewis, was
snatched from the streets by armed men in a pickup truck. A government
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the
situation, said the kidnappers were believed to have links to an Iran-backed
militia. She was freed by security forces Friday in east Baghdad.
Adding to the pressures on Kadhimi are the broken economy 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 one of Iraq’s most respected analysts, Hashimi had once been
well-connected with major figures inside the militias. But the U.S. drone strike
in January that killed an Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and Iraqi militia
leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis upended the militia scene, according to experts
monitoring the groups, changing how they operated and who controlled them. So
when Hashimi began receiving death threats from their ranks in recent months,
including 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 research fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East
and North Africa Program and a close friend of Hashimi. “All of his senior PMF
contacts had gone into hiding and could not control increasingly rogue groups.”
Mourners carry Hashimi’s coffin during his funeral in Baghdad on July
7. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)
Political analysts said the targeted killing of Soleimani and Muhandis
suddenly made it difficult for any one leader to control or speak for a
fragmenting network of armed groups.
Experts tracking the Quds Force, the external operations wing of
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Force, which supports groups in Iraq, say that
Soleimani’s successor, Ismail Qaani, is 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 leadership
style, which means greater delegation of responsibility to the field
commanders,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States
Institute in Washington.
Muhandis’s death also been keenly felt. His replacement, Abu Fadak
al-Mohammedawi, took months to be named and does not have the same ability to
forge a common position among the groups, militia sources and U.S. and Iraqi
security officials say.
“And so it’s harder and harder to track everyone,” said one U.S.
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the
situation. “We’re seeing the impact of that now.”
When rocket attacks or ambushes occur, they are claimed now by
previously unknown militia groups whose membership is also unknown. It is
unclear, one Iraqi official said, whether these are splinter groups or existing
militias using another name, and so reining them in “feels like chasing
ghosts.”
Kadhimi’s political associates and human rights monitors say they are
skeptical about what the investigation into Hashimi’s killing could achieve. At
most, several 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 journalist now based in
Iraq’s Kurdish region. “Hisham’s death showed that the Iraqi state and its law
are just ink on paper.”
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