Iraqi parties are racing against time to pass the draft law of the popular crowd in the Iraqi parliament before the end of the battle of Mosul against al Daesh in anticipation that the expel of Daesh from Nineveh province will lead to the absence of justification to proceed with the continuation of government spending on Shiite militias. Therefore this Council discussed last Wednesday , during its 25 session , the project of the Act of Popular Crowd , which provides for the consideration of the crowd as a formation that enjoys with legal personality and part of the armed forces and linked with the commander in chief of the armed forces, and stipulated the inclusion of members of formation with the law starting from June 13 2014.
And the legal draft law adopted by the National Alliance (Shiite) gives fighters of the popular crowd privileges parallel to those received by the members of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, which are relatively high privileges compared to salaries for civil institutions. The draft law obligate the government of arming the popular crowd, and meet all its logistic requirements , and give it the authority to liberate the provinces under the control of Daesh , which means to legitimize its spread in the Sunni areas, and the consequent abuses and violations of a sectarian dimension against the local population. The draft law does not aim only to accommodate the fighters of the crowd in the army or Iraqi forces , but to recognize the militias as a military entity independent from the rest of the systems and the Iraqi government undertakes spending on it on condition that the crowd keeps independently with its management and agenda.
The legal draft law of People crowd presented to the Iraqi parliament has raised wide argument and sharp disagreements between the Shiite National Alliance who insists on passing the law, and among other powers that have reservations and concerns about it . The political blocs in parliament have agreed to vote in 26 of the current month’s meeting on the draft law of People crowd , before the start of the legislative recess for the current season at the end of this month. And sharp differences have been escalated on some articles of the controversial draft law amid objections of Kurds and the Union of Iraqi forces on the grounds that it gives legal immunity for its affiliates amid accusations of committing abuses in the liberated areas, noting that the Iraqi government admitted to the occurrence of some of them. The map of the objectors of Representatives indicates to the Sunni rare unanimity to oppose the draft law.
It is not true that the popular crowd, which was founded on June 13 2014, based on a fatwa of Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani to face the organization Daesh that includes all Iraq’s communities and his own people as claimed by Hakim Al-Zmili , the chairman of the Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi Council of Representatives noting that in a study prepared by the Rawabet Centre for Research and strategic Studies about the popular crowd and published in the August 28 of this year, which came under the title “popular Crowd in Iraq .. Origin and future “the survey study ” the study showed that the most elements of popular crowd are descended from the southern provinces of the Shiite character and consists of 76 armed factions that the religious marja of the most of them is the Iranian Murshed ( Supreme Leader) of revolution Ali Khamenei. And that 80% percent of its military effort is the responsibility of Saraya Al-Salam , the Badr Brigade, the Hezbollah Brigades of Iraq, and Asaib Ahl-Al-Haq ,they are also religious factions affiliated to Ali Khamenei, with the exception of one Christian faction , a “battalion of Babylon.” So the popular crowd is not as said by Hakim Al- Zamili that it represents all the people of Iraq , but represents one sectarian spectrum “Shiite” of the Iraqi society.
And the legal draft law of Popular crowd if passed in the Iraqi parliament would raise concerns of different Iraqi spectrums because it legitimizes to the militias who have non-Iraqi agendas , as they relate to the Iranian regime, and planning to fight proxy wars for their interests , such as announcing the transition to Syria to fight alongside the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad after the completion of the battle of Mosul .As its leaders announce since now that the «crowd» is a necessity required by the threats facing Iraq and waving from now to the need to fight Daesh in Syria. Nouri al-Maliki was not satisfied, a political face on the top of the government pyramid, by shouting « we are coming ,Al-Riqa» as the capital of Daesh, but added saying « we are coming, Aleppo » . Iraqi Observers said that to give legal legitimacy to the sectarian militias will obligate the government to legitimize the other ethnic and sectarian components such as units of the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Sunni National crowd , otherwise it would announce its bias to a certain component without the other and lose its character as an Iraqi inclusive government.
The continuation of the popular crowd in Iraq after Daesh may increase of Iraq’s internal and external crises , Internally we can talk here that the continuance of it would increase the burden on Iraq’s Finance especially the Iraqi state since years ago is suffering from a severe financial crisis due to the decline in global oil prices which reflected directly on the government sector because the Iraqi government has become unable to pay salaries to half of its staff, and there is no doubt that the government will double the deficit with the addition of more than 100 thousand element of the popular crowd at Iraq’s institutions. The Matter here is not confined only to the salaries of those elements, but also the need of the military supplies and financial allocations for media channels as well. This financial crisis has been accompanied by a security crisis in Iraq noting that these factions that make up the popular crowd despite its integration into the Iraqi state institutions, but it effectively will continue to receive orders from its organizational leadership and not government, Each one knows that those particular factions such as “Saraya Al-Salam , Hezbollah Brigades of Iraq and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Brigade ” are in control of certain parts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad and the provinces of Iraq of Shiite component , and these factions have the ammunitions and weapons making their control seems as an actual division to the areas they control as if we were in front of the case” the kings of the tawai’f that prevailed in the state of Andalusia as conflicts and wars between them led to the fall of Andalusia and this may be repeated in Iraq after Daesh and postmodern world as factions leaders in Iraq may becoming emirs of tawai’f ” communities” , including disagreements and conflicts may lead Iraq to the brink of the abyss, and the truth of this hypothesis was proved as the armed factions already engaged in armed conflicts among themselves in the south of Iraq.
On the external level that the continuation of the popular crowd in Iraq after Daesh and its political, military, security and media and economic weight and a link of its main factions as it was also known to the Iranian regime and the control of this regime on Iraq since 2006 and to this day, it may make the popular crowd as reserve army to the Iranian regime in Iraq and be a tool for this regime to intervene in Arab affairs to destabilize it, it is no wonder that it will send some factions of the popular crowd after elimination of the Daesh in Iraq to Syria to support Bashar al-Assad, and sends it also to some of the Arab Gulf states, then , the disaster will be taken place in Iraq first and in Arab secondly noting that the Iranian regime in this case hits the Arabs with Arabs, and Iran is the only one which benefited from this beating. This is not what we hope for.
This means that the dark tunnel in which Iraq entered to it will not end with the end of regulation Daesh but may be a new beginning for conflicts in Iraq, including the popular crowd and emphasis on sectarian quotas in the governance of Iraq, and conflicts between the majority of the Sunni population of Mosul who are interested in their city administration to certain extent of independence and between the federal government predominantly by Shiite color, which will seek to restore its central control over the province, and the conflict between the Kurds, who will seek to deduct parts of the province and its annexation to Kurdistan and the federal government, and conflicts between the Arabs of Mosul and the Kurds about the matter itself, and the potential conflict between Turkey and Iraq, which is bound to witness a realignment of Iraqi forces with each of the two disputants, a process that has existed since now, as Turkey adopts the wing of President of Iraqi Kurdistan Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leadership and the Arab trained current for the battle of Mosul .
As well as the existence of a chaos of rampant weapon in Iraq noting that the popular crowd who owns a huge amount of weapons can no longer be disarmed under any circumstances, and Daesh war made available for the Kurdish Peshmerga more regulation and arms until it became a strong army . For its part, A Sunni tribal groups are trying to catch the “arms race” in Iraq and participate in the ongoing war against al Daesh and hold the land that is to be restored from its fighters and in southern Iraq , armed clashes took place in some areas of the separated periods in the range of tribal and family disputes revealed about a huge amount of light and medium weapons owned by Shiite clans .
And it is expected that the issue of misuse of weapons will remain exist in Iraq, and to be turned in the post Daesh to the existential danger threatening entity of the Iraqi state, which reached to an unprecedented degree of weakness that touched various institutions, including the security and military institutions that had sectarian considerations and armed Shiite forces appeared to compete it and working as a factor to weaken it and prevent to rebuild it after the semi-collapse case reached during the past years. According to the followers of the Iraqi affairs , the chaos of weapons had its consequences that go beyond of its security appearance to the political situation in the country and what distinguishes it of the fierce struggles on power . They assert that the weapons attributed to factions of the popular crowd are in the end weapons belonging to the competing personalities and parties , and each one of them has known militia works for its interest . and they warn that the state of the political life in Iraq of sharp disagreements and conflicts alarm that the struggle for positions and gains could turn into an armed conflict, especially if the war on organization of Daesh ended and tens of thousands of fighters have become idle and free from work with a huge amount of the weapons and ammunition at their hands .
Not to mention the competition which could be up to the level of conflict between the Iranian regime and Turkey on Iraq in general and the control on the strategic city of Mosul to both of them in particular. the day is not far off when the Iraqi parliament will vote on the law, if necessary, to establish a «popular crowd» as a force independent from the Armed Forces . Waiting for the parliamentary elections after two years ? if the uncalculated surprises did not occur in Iraq of surprises , the representatives of «crowd» would achieve big victories that secure their control on the ruling Shi’ite National Alliance, so the Iraqi citizen aspiring to build a civil state is not the only one who fears from this nightmare .And not a Sunni and non-Arab people are alone in fear of it . Perhaps the ones who feared more from the nightmare are the leaders of Shiite National Alliance as the balance of powers within their structure will be turned . As if the destiny of the Iraqi state since 2003 and to this day to live the case of the troubled state and the society which is going to fall due to its endless crises .
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies