By Sylvain Mercadier and Elijah Magnier
After the publication of my article “The militias in Iraq, from popular mobilization to political interference”, Al Rai chief international correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier commented on the article and provided some additional observations that either supplement or contradict some information presented in it. The following are points provided by Mr. Magnier, with some responses of mine, as well.
1) Organizations such as the Abbas Division and the Ali al-Akhbar Brigade were directly funded and equipped by Sistani himself and not by the Iraqi Army. Now they will merge with the Interior Ministry.
2) A common mistake: Badr, Nujaba’, Asaeb, Hezbollah Iraq… all fought under Hashd flag but never disintegrated within (considered part of Iraq security forces). These kept their own parties and organizations and will detach themselves when ISIS is defeated.
3) The Peace Brigade (Saraya al-Salam) Sadrist movement is not part of Hashd and is based (north of Baghdad) in Samaraa only (Baghdad and south of Iraq).
4) All PMU do not exceed 40-50k.
Mr. Magnier and myself have had an exchange to clarify these questions, which constitute either nuances or discrepancies with data provided by available studies. It is worth mentioning that Mr. Magnier has more than 30 years of experience as a war zone correspondent and in political analysis and risk assessment. Furthermore, he enjoys a close relationship with numerous high-ranked Iraqi Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish personalities and spent over ten years in Iraq.
As I said, there are divergent or conflicting evidence in some of the sources I used in my research and what Mr. Magnier stated.
1) The MERI report that I relied upon specifically claims that Abbas Division and Ali al-Akhbar Brigade are funded by the Iraqi army. Mr. Magnier, who is in regular contact with the Marja’iya (highest religious authority in Iraq), including with Sayed Ahmad al-Safi, the representative of the Marja’iya (the Shiite religious establishment of Iraq) at al-Abbas Shrine in Karbala, was able to confirm to us that the Marja’iya had directly funded and armed the two militias affiliated with Ayatollah Sistani and that the Iraqi army did not play a role in equipping them.
2) In our exchange, Mr. Magnier stressed that the few of the pro-Iranian militias have joined the Hashd al-Sha’bi in 2014 with the aim of fighting the Islamic State (IS) group, but that large portions of these militias (that were all formed prior to the Hashd al-Sha’bi) have kept most of their men outside of the Hashd today. It seems that most of the soldiers that joined the Hashd were instructed to do so by their leadership, but were also attracted by the better salaries and social security that was proposed to them as well as the need for the leadership of these militias to gain legitimacy in their military actions in Iraq. But the independence of these militias remains untouched today and they have indeed refused to merge with the PMU.
3) In my and Araz’s research, we found evidence that conflicts with some of Mr. Magnier’s opinions. Several sources (MERI report, March 2017, p. 21; and more recently a RISE foundation report, Dec. 2017, p.15) claim that Saraya al-Salam (previously known as Jaish al-Mahdi) is part of the Hashd al-Sha’bi and has men operating in Mosul. Mr. Magnier is adamant that these claims are not accurate. He has obtained on-the-ground evidence that Saraya al-Salam’s field of operation does not extend further than Samarra, Baghdad (al-Sadr city), and the south of Iraq (all southern cities including Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyeh, Amara, Basra, etc.) where it is engaged in securing the holy shrines of Shia Islam. However, Saraya al-Salam, under the leadership of Muqtada al-Sadr and those who have declared loyalty to the Sadr family, exist in every single city of Iraq. The bulk of the force is based in Samarra.
4) The PMU receive on a yearly basis a budget from the Prime Minister for 45,000 fighters, no more. The Prime Minister’s office confirmed this to me. The previous budget established by the former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was above the real estimate when no real organization was put in place in the first months of the creation of the PMU. The euphoric panic of the IS advance made the Iraqi government less careful about the real figures of the PMU. When Abadi took over, the numbers were significantly reduced to 45,000. Furthermore, the numbers today are even less than 40,000 due to over 6,000-7,000 killed among the PMU and many more wounded. Finally, families of Iraqi martyrs and wounded fighters are paid by another department.
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