On June 13, 2014, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shia cleric, issued a fatwa asking Iraqis to join the fight against terrorism.
“The nature of the situation and the dangers facing Iraq and its people at the present time require defending the country, its people and the honour of its citizens,” said the cleric in his edict, which was read out by his representative Sheikh Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalai, during Friday prayers in Karbala.
Mr. Sistani’s call came amid the rapid territorial advances made by the Islamic State (IS), a Sunni-jihadist group, in Iraq. After consolidating in the north, they started moving south towards Baghdad, while also threatening Shia holy places such as Najaf and Karbala. In the north, the Iraqi military collapsed in the face of IS advance. There was panic in Baghdad, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was scrambling to arrest the jihadist surge.
On June 10, IS militants captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“This defence is considered a wajib kifai [collective obligation] upon a sufficient number of citizens as is needed to fulfil the task,” Mr. Sistani said in his fatwa . “Hence, the citizens who are able to bear arms and fight the terrorists in defence of their country, their people and their sanctities must volunteer to join the army and the security forces to achieve this sacred objective.”
The U.S. had repeatedly demanded that the Iraqi state demobilise the militias, some of which, such as Kataib Hezbollah, have been designated as terrorist groups. But both mainstream Iraqi politicians and militia commanders have resisted such calls. But they continued to maintain their independent command structures. The prominent members of the PMF also formed political parties and started contesting elections. Besides, the Sadrist movement has a separate political organisation, the National Shia Movement. But the U.S. found it increasingly difficult to deter PMF factions whose decentralised operational tactics and geographical spread worked in their favour. After the U.S. troops completed their pullback, Mr. Some militias such as Kataib Imam Ali and Saraya al-Salam have reached an understanding with the government to hand over weapons and regularise their status. But the more powerful ones such as Kataib Hezbollah and Nujaba have resisted the calls for disarmament, saying the Islamic resistance would continue as long as American military presence in the region continues. But with the war on Iran unresolved and some PMF factions deeply entangled with Iran, any escalation between Tehran and Washington could have a direct impact on Iraq.
In 2016, the Iraqi Parliament passed the PMF commission law, which institutionalised the PMF as an independent organisation within the Iraqi armed forces. In 2018, Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib al-Imam Ali all came together to form the Fatah Alliance, a political coalition to represent the militias in the general elections (the alliance was later disbanded). In the current Iraqi parliament, Badr Organisation has 18 seats, while Sadiqoun Movement, another PMF-linked political bloc, has 27 seats. After the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28, 2026, the Iran-aligned militias in the PMF started attacking American military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq. They carried out some 600 attacks since the war broke out and the U.S. launched air strikes targeting these groups, according to U.S. officials. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had said earlier that the militias would be demobilised by September 30, the deadline for U.S. troops withdrawal. Zaidi said the process of demobilisation had begun, and pushed the deadline to June 2027. Both the U.S. and the militias have agreed to refrain from attacking each other for 90 days following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, according to Iraqi officials.
