Iraq militia leader snubs call to disband
Al Muhandis, who once battled US troops, says the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilisation Forces are here to stay
With Daesh driven from all of Iraq, US officials have suggested that the thousands of mainly Shiite paramilitary fighters who mobilised against the Sunni extremists three years ago lay down their arms.
But Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, who once battled US troops and is now the deputy head of the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilisation Forces, says they are here to stay.
“The future of the [PMF] is to defend Iraq,” he told The Associated Press in his first extensive interview with a western media outlet. “The Iraqi army and Iraqi police say they cannot operate without the support of the Hashd,” he added, using a shortened Arabic term for the paramilitary force.
In the years after the 2003 US-led invasion, Al Muhandis led the Hezbollah Brigades, a feared Shiite militia with close ties to Iran and the Lebanese militant group of the same name. His real name is Jamal Jaafar Ebrahim, and his rise to the top ranks of Iraq’s security apparatus reflects the long, slow decline of US influence over the country.
He participated in the bombing of western embassies in Kuwait and the attempted assassination of that country’s emir in the early 1980s, for which he was convicted in absentia and added to the US list of designated terrorists. But like many Shiite militants, he returned to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion.
In the summer of 2014, when Daesh swept across northern Iraq, his and other Shiite militias mobilised in defence, halting the extremists on the outskirts of the capital. Over the An Iraqi military delegation is preparing to take control of the Kurdistan region border with Syria, an Iraqi military statement said yesterday.
The delegation headed by the Iraqi army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman Al Ganmi, is visiting the Fish-Khabur triangle formed by the Iraqi Turkish Syrian border, in northwestern Iraq
The visit aims to “control the international border” it said, mentioning Iraq’s two crossings with Turkey and Syria, respectively Ebrahim Al Khalil and Fish-Khabur. next three years they helped Iraq’s reconstituted military to drive Daesh out.
Closing in on bastion
Meanwhile, Iraqi forces yesterday battled up to the edge of Al Qaim, the largest town still held by Daesh in the country, as they pushed a final assault on the extremists. Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said government troops — backed by US air strikes and Sunni tribal fighters — captured the village of Al Obeidi, some 20km from the Syrian border on the eastern outskirts of the town.