عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

‘Caesar’s’ Partner ‘Sami’ to Asharq Al-Awsat: ‘Coalition’ Support Helped Extend Assad’s Time in Power

A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
TT
TT

‘Caesar’s’ Partner ‘Sami’ to Asharq Al-Awsat: ‘Coalition’ Support Helped Extend Assad’s Time in Power

A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)

In the second installment of his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Osama Othman, who smuggled files of torture that took place in the Syrian regime’s jails, recalled how he and his partner “Caesar” were shocked at how dismissive leader of the opposition “Syrian national coalition” government was of their case.

Othman, known by his codename “Sami”, said that with this attitude, the coalition helped extend the term of now ousted President Bashar al-Assad. “His reckless attitude cost us tens of thousands of lives,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

*We last stopped at the issuance of the “Caesar Act”. What happened next?

The Act was issued when the world was least interested in the Syrian revolution and the plight of the people. So, we established in the United States and later in Paris organizations that have now become the Caesar Files for Justice. The platform is now following up on the legal proceedings related to the Caesar file and others.

I can’t reveal what some of those files are yet, but of course, they are about the Syrian regime’s human rights violations. Some are also related to the impact its practices have had on the economy through its systematic destruction and demographic change it was imposing on the people. We believe that everyone who committed violations in Syria must be held to account.

Some of the violations include the illegal naturalization of people so that Assad could establish what he once called the “beneficial Syria” and a “homogeneous society”. These statements were backed by action on the ground, but whose details I can’t disclose yet because I don’t want to expose people involved in the file.

*The media had spoken of Iranians and Shiite Iraqis who were naturalized. Is this issue covered in the file?

Yes, it is. When you learn that your neighbor speaks a foreign language and acts as though he has been living in Syria for decades, you have to wonder where they came from and who brought them here. Every Syrian used to wonder who these people were. The people handling this file are Syrians who want to protect their country from this systematic and non-systematic demographic change.

This leads us to what I call the massacre that was committed against the evidence, documents and archives, not just at the security branches and prisons, but at other institutions. We all saw how the passports directorate was bombed. These places are very important because they held a lot of evidence and information. When places that important are bombed, it is to hide evidence and documents. The strikes that took place after Assad fled the country are just more crimes added to his list of violations against Syria.

*Are you saying that Assad’s agencies and Israel were working together?

I can’t make such accusations. All I am saying is that such incidents became more frequent after he fled, and you can draw your own conclusions.

Anti-government fighters gather in front of the Kuweires military airfield and academy in the eastern part of Aleppo province on December 1, 2024. (AFP)

Hezbollah Saved Assad

*Who turned the tables in Syria and extended Assad and the regime’s time in power? Do you believe the Russians were involved in the violations? What about the Iranian militias and Hezbollah?

We nearly hung posters of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in our homes in 2006. We used to weep when we learned about the martyrdom of its members. In 2006, I hosted a Lebanese family in my home in Wadi Barada in northern Damascus.

Hezbollah had openly declared that if it weren’t for its intervention, Assad would have fallen within months. That’s enough. Nasrallah said it himself and Hezbollah’s actions on the ground back his statements. So, certainly Hezbollah’s intervention in the early years of the conflict was decisive for the regime.

Other militias came pouring through soon after and we started to notice foreigners in our country. We used to hear gunmen speak in foreign languages as they roamed our streets. Right in front of my house were several people who didn’t speak a word of Arabic. They observed a peaceful rally that was mourning a martyr killed by regime shelling on the city. I never dared ask the strangers where they came from and what they were doing here. You could easily spot the foreigners in our city of al-Tall in the Damascus countryside.

They came in months after Hezbollah’s intervention. Then came Russia’s intervention in 2015 which was the most decisive. This led the rebels to become constrained to specific regions and losing territories they had captured from the regime. Iran, Russia and the militias were partners with the regime in killing the Syrian people and destroying their country. It doesn’t take much effort to prove this.

Close Calls

*Did the regime ever come close to discovering the Caesar files?

My family’s house in al-Tall was once raided by the regime. They were searching for my youngest brother because he had taken part in a peaceful demonstration or some normal everyday thing which we all did. The members of the “political security” branch raided our home. This was at the beginning of the revolution and the officer in charge still showed some decency and respect.

He came into the house and carried out his search. He took the computers that I used for my work as a civil engineer. He had found it in my brother’s room. He took everything related to the computer. I remember the officer’s name was Mohammed Jomaa. When he learned that I was a civil engineer, he lectured me about patriotism and how the nation had spared no expense so that we could earn an education – slogans that regime members are forced to memorize during indoctrination sessions.

He took my ID and told me I should head to Damascus to get it and that I should bring my brother too to collect the computer. So, I remained without an ID for some time. I couldn’t even leave my city because showing up at any checkpoint without identification would have gotten me arrested. Had I been arrested, I would have ended up as one of the Caesar file photos.

During another incident, al-Tall was being invaded by the regime after a long battle with the rebels inside the city and the displacement of nearly all its residents. I had taken my parents and siblings to the nearby city of Seydnaya and stayed home. My youngest brother could not leave al-Tall and I wanted to remain with him and to also protect the data we had. My third brother insisted on remaining with us and so we did. We were searched by the security forces on numerous occasions.

The Free Syrian Army soon withdrew from the city and the regime forces swept in, committing several massacres in al-Tall. We were then forced to flee the building we were staying in. We couldn’t stay in our own home because it was located at the entrance of the city where the invasion had begun. So, I hid the camera I had and some equipment under a pile of garbage below the building. I thought to myself: “I’ll be able to find them should I survive because the forces won’t think about searching in the garbage for such things.”

We managed to flee the city and remained away for five or six days before returning to al-Tall. It was a holiday, so security had become a bit lax and phone services were restored. While in hiding, we witnessed how a tank and sniper had taken up position on higher ground. They were ready to attack anyone who passed through the area. The three of us had basically escaped with our lives.

Syria’s seat and the flag of the revolution are seen at an Arab League summit in Doha in 2013. (AFP)

Coalition Gives Assad Indirect Support

*Aside from the regime, did anyone try to undermine, obstruct or exploit your work?

In a way, yes. Our main battle after leaving Syria was aimed at preserving this file and keeping it away from political meddling. This file is about human rights violations. It belongs to all Syrians and it should be kept away from narrow interests. At first, the coalition tried to present itself as the sponsor of the file, which was a normal thing to do.

I approached them with a friend and met with the head of the government. I was in the waiting room for four hours with people drinking tea and coffee as if they were in a cafe. It was unfortunate to listen to conversations that had nothing to do with what was happening in Syria.

After four hours, we sat down for a short meeting with the head of government and explained the file to him. “We need help that would ensure that this file would be kept out of political disputes between the various members of the opposition and others. We need to protect our loved ones who are still in Syria,” we urged him. His response to this was truly shocking. “So you think this file will shake Bashar al-Assad's throne?” he told me.

The response was disappointing and unfortunate because he was someone who was supposed to be speaking on behalf of the Syrian revolution. This revolt is the most significant one since the French Revolution in 1789.

The toppling of the regime and establishment of a state of law and justice in Syria will change the Middle East and in turn, the world. This is what the French Revolution did three centuries ago. And so, for the coalition government to respond to me in such a way was very offensive. I left the meeting feeling dejected and with my thoughts with my family that we were trying to bring from Damascus.

That moment pained me deeply. I had come all this way, put myself and others in danger, only to come across someone who was there to exploit me. It was just such a shocking moment.

*So you were disappointed with the opposition?

Disappointment doesn’t even cut it. I was saddened and dejected. Had the Caesar file been handled properly, Assad wouldn’t have remained on his throne until 2024. Such a lack of responsibility. It is this attitude that extended the life of the Syrian regime and cost tens of thousands of Syrian lives.

So, for example, if you were to hold negotiations with the regime, what cards would you have if the Caesar file wasn’t one of them? What would you even talk about? The opposition spoke at international platforms of everything from the constitution to the color of the flag, language and system of rule. Not once did it bring up the issue of the detainees.

We have long said that the detainee file was above negotiations, meaning we would not negotiate with the regime over anything before we discuss this issue. Some members of the opposition interpreted this as negotiating everything and setting this issue to the side. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is why I say that the coalition helped extend the regime’s time in power.

People search for their loved ones among corpses of victims of torture at Seydnaya Prison. (AFP)

Seydnaya Prison and the Human Press

*You compared Seydnaya Prison to the Bastille and the Syrian revolution to the French one. What comes to mind when I say “Seydnaya”?

After the world saw what it was like inside Seydnaya, I can’t even imagine what it was like for people to be imprisoned there. For them to turn into numbers, then corpses and rotten bodies that are still living. They are then taken to the human press where they are turned into bones and tissue. Who could even imagine such a thing? Who could even endure such terror?

On the outside, we used to look at the prison as a symbol of oppression and injustice. These words don’t do justice to what the detainees went through for even a few minutes, so what could it even have been like for people who were held there for dozens of years? Perhaps the lucky ones were the detainees who entered the prison and were swiftly taken to the press.

*Were you surprised to learn about the press? Were you expecting to see such a thing?

It never occurred to me that the regime would use a press against humans. We had heard a lot about the different forms of torture and the mass graves, but a human press?! What kind of criminal mind did this regime have?

*What purpose did this press serve?

You and me, we are normal humans who love and feel for our relatives. We think soundly. This is not a question that can be answered by people who think reasonably. What could possibly prompt a criminal regime, which has the whole of Syria, to bring in a press to turn corpses into dust. The prison itself has thousands of meters of territory. Just bury the corpses there. No normal person could have operated the press.

Small Butchers and Senior Officers

*Can you name any of the big butchers who were responsible for the torture?

The list is long. We had filed lawsuits against several people before the German judiciary, including deputy chief of security affairs Ali Mamlouk, deputy director of national security and former head of military intelligence Abdel Fattah Qadsiye, and head of air force intelligence and Mazzeh prison warden Jamil al-Hassan. Hassan was the target of the first arrest warrant issued by the German judiciary.

The heads of security branches are directly responsible for the killing under torture, but they are not the only ones responsible. I have always said that arresting the head of the security branch and charging him with war crimes is not as important as issuing charges against the person who carried out the actual killing and torture in these jails. These are the people who enjoyed the killing. They don’t just kill because they were ordered to do so; they do it because they relish torturing people, and the result are the images that we have seen after the ouster of the regime.

They believe that they will be protected by their superiors and that they won’t be held to account. All the trials that have been held outside of Syria were dedicated to trying top rank officials or people who were proven to have committed murder. This is not enough. We must get the names of the people who carried out the direct killings so that they realize that the regime that they worshipped like God does not protect them.

People look through documents at the Seydnaya prison in Damascus on December 11, 2024. (AFP)

*Are the documents that have been collected enough to indict the smaller employees? Are there any names?

If you mean the Caesar files, which we took out of Syria in 2013, they only have a limited number of photos of regime members. Some names are there through signatures on documents, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were the ones who tortured and killed the victims. Our files don’t have the names of the butchers in the jails who carried out the killing.

In order to establish a free Syria and a stable society, you must go through a period of transitional justice, which demands accountability. You cannot live in an area knowing that your neighbor still reeks of blood because he used to work for several years in Assad’s jails where he used to torture or kill detainees. So, everyone who committed human rights violations in Syria must be held to account in order for our society to become stable. We mustn't allow the opportunity for individual acts of revenge if relatives come to believe that they have not received justice against those who killed their loved ones.

The violations are not limited to killing and torture. There are so many violations. Everything that undermines human dignity is a violation, and so are attempts to create demographic change. You can’t simply tell people who lived in a tent along the Turkish border, Jordanian desert or in Lebanon for 12 years to return home, the regime is gone. Add to that a whole generation that has never been to school. They have never been given an opportunity to live a normal human life. So, these people must be compensated.

Destruction of Documents

*Do you worry that the fate of the victims of Seydnaya Prison will be the same as those of the Hama massacre?

This leads us to a problem that happened after Damascus’ liberation from the criminal tyrant Assad. The chaos that ensued in the first few days after his ouster led to the loss of a lot of documents and evidence. Of course, I am not blaming relatives who were frantically searching for their loved ones. They are justified for and had every right to feel that way. But I refuse that for you to receive your right, you deny others of theirs. The destruction of documents means that we won’t have evidence that implicates the criminals. So, you just denied relatives of victims their right to see the butcher who killed their son held to account.

Relatives entering the prisons wasn’t the only way these documents were destroyed. Some places were left in bad shape, and some were burned down later by unknown people. So, we know that some people are deliberately doing this with the aim of destroying these documents. Bashar al-Assad and the other criminals are probably very happy to see evidence destroyed this way and prison doors being flung open without documenting who the detainees are. We saw how prisoners walked on foot, naked, from Seydnaya to al-Tall. That’s a 3-km walk in the cold night.

*Do you compare Assad’s downfall to Saddam Hussein’s?

I don’t think you can compare the two. First, Assad was toppled by the Syrian people and by terror. Assad was toppled before the revolutionary forces made it to Damascus. All the conditions for his collapse were there. He was in his weakest state, and he was ousted by heroic Syrians, who entered Damascus after liberating Hama and Homs. Other Syrians had also worked on isolating the regime politically and economically by working with rights groups.

The situation was not like Iraq. A comparison between Assad and any other case from our time or in the past wrongs the other party. I don’t think Nero even deserves to be compared to Assad.

*So, is Nero better?

“Better” or “worse” are not the right words for this. I am saying that Bashar al-Assad was crazier and more criminal than Nero. There’s no room here to use the word “better”.

*The interview concludes on Thursday.

Most Viewed

 
 
Features

Caspian Sea Provides Lifeline for Iran amid Sanctions, Blockade

An Iranian man walks past the map of Iran, with its citizens holding hands, painted on a wall in the capital Tehran on May 9, 2026. (AFP)
An Iranian man walks past the map of Iran, with its citizens holding hands, painted on a wall in the capital Tehran on May 9, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Caspian Sea Provides Lifeline for Iran amid Sanctions, Blockade

An Iranian man walks past the map of Iran, with its citizens holding hands, painted on a wall in the capital Tehran on May 9, 2026. (AFP)
An Iranian man walks past the map of Iran, with its citizens holding hands, painted on a wall in the capital Tehran on May 9, 2026. (AFP)

Amid the regional tensions and western sanctions, a complex network of supply routes is beginning to emerge, underscoring the alliances between Russia, Iran and China in confronting mounting US pressure on Iran’s military program and its ability to maintain its production.

In March, Israel carried out a “one of the most significant” strikes on Iran targeting its naval command center at the port of Bandar Anzali, located on the Caspian Sea.

The Caspian Sea, a huge body of water hundreds of miles north of the Gulf. Routinely overlooked, the Caspian has taken on new significance as a trade route linking Russia and Iran, reported The New York Times on Saturday.

For two allies that have been embroiled in wars and facing more Western sanctions than any other country, the waterway provides a passageway for both overt and covert trade — shipments that have helped Iran persist as an adversary to the United States despite overwhelming American military superiority.

Russia is shipping drone components to Iran via the Caspian Sea, US officials say, helping Iran rebuild its offensive abilities after losing roughly 60 percent of its drone arsenal during recent fighting. The officials spoke anonymously to divulge private military assessments.

Russia also provides goods that would typically pass through the Strait of Hormuz, now blockaded by the US Navy, as part of global trade.

Bigger than Japan, the Caspian is considered the largest lake in the world. Much of the trade passing through it is opaque. It has proved difficult to monitor from afar, not least because ships plying the route between Russian and Iranian ports habitually turn off the transponders that allow for satellite tracking, according to maritime tracking groups.

“If you’re thinking about the ideal place for sanction evasion and military transfers, it’s the Caspian,” said Nicole Grajewski, a professor specializing in Iran and Russia at Sciences Po in Paris, according to NYT.

While both Russia and Iran are public about trade in commodities like wheat, trade in weapons systems is a different issue.

Drone shipments show the close defense partnership between Moscow and Tehran. While it is unlikely the Russian parts play a decisive role in Iran’s war with the United States and Israel, they help bolster Tehran’s drone arsenal. If the shipments continue, they will help Iran to quickly rebuild that arsenal, the US officials said.

The trade flowed in both directions in years past, the officials said, with Iran shipping drones to Russia for use in Ukraine even as Russia sent parts to Iran. The need for supplies from Iran diminished after July 2023 however, when Russia, under license from Iran, began producing its own model of the Shahed drone at a factory in Tatarstan.

Asian networks

The US Treasury on Friday announced sanctions against 10 individuals and companies, including several in China and Hong Kong, over accusations they aided Iran's efforts to secure weapons and the raw materials needed to build its Shahed drones and ballistic missiles.

The Treasury move, first reported by Reuters, comes days before US President Donald Trump plans to travel to China for a meeting with President Xi Jinping and as efforts to end the war with Iran have stalled.

In a statement, Treasury said it remained ready to take economic action against Iran's military industrial base ‌to prevent Tehran ‌from reconstituting its production capacity.

The Treasury said it was ‌also ⁠prepared to act ⁠against any foreign company supporting illicit Iranian commerce, including airlines, and could impose secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions that aid Iran's efforts, including those connected to China's independent "teapot" oil refineries.

Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, said Treasury's actions were aimed at cracking down on Iran's ability to threaten ships operating in the Strait of Hormuz and regional allies.

Iran shut the ⁠Strait of Hormuz, a narrow chokepoint between Iran and ‌Oman through which a fifth of ‌the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas passes, after the US and Israel attacked ‌a large number of targets in Iran on February 28. Shipping ‌through the crucial waterway has ground to a near halt since the war began, sending energy prices sharply higher.

Iran is a major drone manufacturer and has the industrial capacity to produce around 10,000 a month, according to the British government-fund ‌Centre for Information Resilience.

Erickson said the sanctions were still narrowly focused, giving Iran more time to adapt ⁠and reroute ⁠procurement to other suppliers. The Treasury was also not yet going after Chinese banks that were keeping Iran's economy going, he added.

The companies facing sanctions include the China-based Yushita Shanghai International Trade Co Ltd for facilitating acquisition efforts for Iran to purchase weapons from China; Elite Energy FZCO for transferring millions of dollars to a Hong Kong company to aid the procurement effort; and Hong Kong-based HK Hesin Industry Co Ltd and Belarus-based Armory Alliance LLC for working as intermediaries in the procurements.

The sanctions also targeted Hong Kong-based Mustad Ltd for facilitating weapon procurement by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps; Iran-based Pishgam Electronic Safeh Co for procuring motors used in drones; and China-based Hitex Insulation Ningbo Co Ltd for supplying materials used in ballistic missiles.

Features

Marathon Marks Turning Point for Palestinian Runner Released from Israeli Prison

Palestinian Mohamad Al-Assi, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago, runs past Israel's separation wall as he trains ahead of the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, May 7, 2026. (AP)
Palestinian Mohamad Al-Assi, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago, runs past Israel's separation wall as he trains ahead of the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, May 7, 2026. (AP)
TT
TT

Marathon Marks Turning Point for Palestinian Runner Released from Israeli Prison

Palestinian Mohamad Al-Assi, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago, runs past Israel's separation wall as he trains ahead of the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, May 7, 2026. (AP)
Palestinian Mohamad Al-Assi, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago, runs past Israel's separation wall as he trains ahead of the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, May 7, 2026. (AP)

Mohamad Al-Assi ran beneath the concrete wall as the sun rose over Bethlehem. His Nikes pounded the gravel, his breath fogging the air as graffiti and paint splatter blurred past with each stride.

The road along the barrier separating Israel from the occupied West Bank makes up a stretch of a marathon route that Al-Assi and thousands of others ran on Friday. The event is open to people in other parts of the world running in solidarity with the Palestinians and another, shorter race was happening in Gaza.

The race, known as the Palestine Marathon, was held for the first time in three years and was among the first big international events in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Festivals, conferences and holiday festivities that once drew thousands have been scaled back or canceled because of the war in Gaza and heightened Israeli restrictions.

It marked a turning point for Al-Assi, 27, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago. Video from that day shows him gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed, his once muscular legs weakened after more than two-and-a-half years of prison.

He began training in December, gradually upping his mileage every month since. He ran 62 miles (100 kilometers) that first month, and in April reached 135 miles (217 kilometers), according to his account on the tracking app Strava.

He jogs in the morning after his mother wakes him up in their home in Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp made up of graffiti-covered cinderblock homes in tangled alleyways.

“The main difficulties we face are the cars on the roads and the presence of Israeli security forces along the route where I train,” Al-Assi said.

He had to suspend his training several times because of military operations in the camp.

“I would return home feeling hopeless because I couldn't do what I had intended to do,” Al-Assi said.

Running where roads are blocked

In the West Bank, runners cannot complete a 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) course without hitting a checkpoint or military gate, which is why Friday's marathon route looped around the same circuit twice.

They ran up through the narrow streets of two Palestinian refugee camps and down to a farming town next to Bethlehem where fields are divided by the concrete wall, barbed wire and cameras. The course hooked back to finish at Bethlehem’s Manger Square.

Organizers say the race highlights restrictions facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where checkpoints can disrupt even routine commutes and where open land for hiking, biking and running is increasingly taken by Israeli settlements and outposts.

“Marathon runners anywhere may ‘hit a wall’ under the physical and emotional strain of completing the 42-kilometer race course," they said on the marathon's website.

But in the West Bank, they added, "runners literally hit the Wall.”

At a time when the West Bank’s economy is struggling and in the shadow of Gaza's fragile ceasefire and stalled rebuilding efforts, the atmosphere in Bethlehem was celebratory. Crowds gathered near the Church of the Nativity to cheer runners at the race's early morning start and finish. Bagpipes blared and drummers pounded out traditional rhythms through streets along the route.

On a beachside road in Nuseirat in central Gaza — which is roughly the length of a marathon — 15 disabled people, including amputees, ran a 2K, and a couple of thousand of people ran a 5K. Thirteen years after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, canceled a 2013 marathon because Hamas forbade women from participating, the women were back.

Haya Alnaji, a 22-year-old woman who ran in the 5K, said the number of people taking part reflected that Palestinians in Gaza were determined to live and persevere despite the devastation wrought by more than two years of war.

“All of Gaza loves sports,” she said.

Rebuilding body and spirit

Al-Assi was arrested in April 2023, and imprisoned under administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold detainees for months without charge. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Palestinians are being held under that system, according to Israeli rights groups and the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

In October 2023, Al-Assi was sentenced for transferring money to suspicious entities, a charge he denies. Israel closely monitors money transfers — particularly to Gaza — for fear that funds could end up in the hands of fighters. Palestinians, however, say donations and charitable contributions are often swept up in the dragnet. Israel’s military, Shin Bet and Prison Service did not answer questions about Al-Assi's charges.

In Israeli prisons, where detainees routinely complain of inadequate diets, Al-Assi said nearly everyone goes hungry. The weight he lost eroded the endurance built through 10 years of training.

“I have more muscle mass than fat, so when I lost weight, the loss came from my muscles rather than fat,” he said. “This had a major impact on my physical fitness.”

He also had to regain the mental fortitude to run a marathon.

“I was emotionally shattered after spending such a long period in prison,” he said.

On Friday, he collapsed to his knees, bowing and thanking God after finishing second overall, as supporters and journalists encircled him. He dedicated his run to Palestinians still in Israeli detention.

“After 32 months in prison, Mohamad Al-Assi is first in his class!” he shouted through tears, raising his hands and looking up to the sky.

Features

Iran’s War in Iraq Reveals Militias’ Expanding Grip

A Popular Mobilization Forces member rides a motorcycle during a patrol in western Iraq.
A Popular Mobilization Forces member rides a motorcycle during a patrol in western Iraq.
TT
TT

Iran’s War in Iraq Reveals Militias’ Expanding Grip

A Popular Mobilization Forces member rides a motorcycle during a patrol in western Iraq.
A Popular Mobilization Forces member rides a motorcycle during a patrol in western Iraq.

“If you must fall, be a meteor.” The phrase was written on a mural inside Baghdad’s Green Zone. Beside it was a drawing of faceless fighters in helmets, carrying rifles. They looked ready to fight on several fronts.

Senior officials and officers in Baghdad likely pass the mural on their way to government offices, including leaders of factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces. Nearly two months after the US-Iranian war, it is clear that many of them do not want to become falling meteors.

A day before the war, an Asharq Al-Awsat correspondent was trying to conduct interviews in Baghdad. The Iraqi officials they met were tied up in “emergency” meetings.

One said employees at Iraq’s Ministry of Migration had discussed a “possible alert,” which he considered “a very worrying signal.”

Baghdad awoke on the morning of February 28, 2026, to the sound of strikes in Tehran. By evening, we were told that a picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s body had reached the phones of leaders in the Coordination Framework hours before US President Donald Trump announced his death.

Then began one of the strangest nights the Iraqi capital had seen.

In Baghdad, two kinds of Tehran’s allies appeared to stand on opposite sides. They seemed to be preparing to settle scores that had remained dormant for years, or bracing for another rebirth, one that has repeated itself again and again since 2003.

“Do these people really follow Khamenei?”

The second day of the war. The Green Zone was on high alert. Streets were closed, barriers and checkpoints were in place, and security forces inspected those without permits to enter the government district. No curfew had been declared, but in practice, people were moving through an undeclared one.

That evening, Asaib Ahl al Haq, led by Qais al Khazali, held a mourning gathering for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Dozens gathered near Jumhuriya Bridge in central Baghdad. They arrived with a convoy of Chevrolet Tahoe vehicles, a model favored by many politicians, officials and leaders of armed groups. The demonstrators carried banners mourning Khamenei beneath the historic Freedom Monument, protected by a ring of security forces. There was no friction.

Traffic on the bridge remained normal. Cars moved smoothly toward the eastern entrance of the Green Zone, except for a small cluster of reporters from partisan channels funded by factions with influence in the government. They were interviewing “mourners over Khamenei’s killing.” It was a quiet show of solidarity. Before long, it dispersed.

In 2019, the same scene was bloody. Hundreds of young men were killed or wounded after taking part in almost daily protests against corruption and Iranian influence in Baghdad, under the slogan, “Iran out, out.” Seven years and 40 days of war later, their voices are no longer heard. Some have fully joined parties in the ruling coalition.

Four kilometers from the silent mourning gathering, the scene at the Suspension Bridge, leading to the western entrance of the Green Zone, was violent and loud. Dozens pushed toward security barriers without hesitation. They wanted to reach the US embassy. Asharq Al-Awsat’s correspondent spotted young men crying bitterly, staring at passersby and scrutinizing those who did not appear sad, as if asking: “How can you not grieve?”

At first, the protest looked improvised. The faces were as frightened as they were angry. Some hurled stones at security forces blocking the bridge entrance with steel barriers and large vehicles fitted with water cannons. Others carried Iranian flags and chanted against Trump, “the killer of the Leader.”

A large bulldozer forced its way through the crowd toward the barrier, followed by a black cloud, a wave of dust and masked men carrying sticks. Live fire and tear gas followed. The bulldozer stopped at a concrete barrier. Its engine failed before it could breach the security fortification, and the chants grew louder.

The correspondent asked one protester what he would do if the road to the US embassy were open. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Even if I throw myself at a tank,” he said. He seemed surprised by the question and tried to make me understand: “They killed our leader. He is our guardian. Do you know what that means?” By night, authorities said dozens had been wounded on both sides, protesters and security forces.

The fact is, days earlier, they had all been on the same side, government and factions alike. The protesters at both bridges had also been in the same trench before Khamenei’s killing.

In the days that followed, the “factions,” the “resistance,” and the Popular Mobilization Forces opened the roads and skies to drones and US strikes.

Apart from these two kinds of Iran’s allies, who appeared to dominate Baghdad’s public space, a segment of Iraqi Shiites saw the war as a chance to criticize Iranian influence in the country. But “a campaign of intimidation silenced them,” according to activists we spoke to.

During the war, people close to Iran incited action against its opponents in Iraq. Images of complaints against them spread on social media. Some were arrested by security forces, but the courts have not yet acted on the complaints. Bloggers also posted pictures of influencers under the headline, “Your day of reckoning will come.”

On the ground, armed groups operating under the umbrella of what is known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched dozens of attacks from the first hours after Khamenei’s killing.

The use of the term “resistance” was one of the methods the Revolutionary Guard and Iraqi factions used to conceal the original perpetrators. Many faction leaders, meanwhile, found themselves walking a fine line during the war, after long pledging to integrate into the state and keep weapons in its hands.

A leader in an armed faction said he was “not sure throughout the weeks of the war on Iran whether his armed followers had taken part in attacks on the Americans and on the Kurdistan Region.” It is not certain that he truly does not know.

In interviews with Iraqi and Western security and political figures, Asharq Al-Awsat sought to understand how the leaders of armed factions in Iraq, and, behind them, the Revolutionary Guard, manage the smooth movement of these groups between government institutions and militias, and how the war exposed dark zones of Iranian influence in the country.

There are different assumptions about the success of this process. But the most likely one is that Iran holds the “spinal cord” connecting everyone, those inside the government and the armed groups outside its authority. Between them lies a bitter, and possibly deadly, struggle over resources and influence.

Militias as “fiefdoms”

The car moves slowly along the bank of a small river in one of the vast fields south of Baghdad. As far as the eye can see, piles of bricks and building materials are scattered across the countryside.

For decades, residents here grew grains and vegetables and sold their crops to the government or local markets. Some had benefited from agricultural reform programs dating back to the 1960s, before those programs deteriorated during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s and gradually disappeared after the US invasion in 2003.

A 70-year-old notable from southern Baghdad describes the fields today: “It is as if we are being violently dragged back to the era of feudal estates. There is an advance by the new feudal lords. The issue is not just a dispute over ownership, but an invisible authority controlling resources.”

The man avoids giving details about how he lost his land about seven years ago, a vast area on the road between Baghdad and Babil to the south. But sources describe what happened as “a maze of multiple fraudulent operations protected by a government bureaucracy that armed factions have skillfully penetrated.”

“These lands are a jungle of investments, in whose shadows facilities belonging to armed groups disappear,” the man said. “I know them. They will seem extremely friendly to you, but with the latest war, they became very tense and suspicious.”

The factions’ strategy of taking over these lands appears to go beyond being a “goose that lays golden eggs,” as two officials, one former and one current, in Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture put it. In the long run, it is “a continuous swallowing of geography in favor of Iran’s political influence.”

A Shiite leader in one of the factions said, “Every inch Hezbollah loses in southern Lebanon is compensated by Iran with kilometers in Iraq.”

But the factions collide as they advance into these lands. Friction often turns into clashes. In July 2025, a policeman, a civilian, and a member of Kataib Hezbollah were killed after a violent confrontation between a government force and the faction, which had stormed Baghdad’s Agriculture Directorate in the Dora area of southern Baghdad to prevent the appointment of a new director. In reality, the Shiite leader said, the operation was a cover for “recycling influence among armed groups.”

After the clashes, the government said the official in charge of regulating agricultural land contracts was involved, before his dismissal, in “forging contracts that led to the seizure of agricultural land from its rightful owners.”

The government’s account appears coherent, but it does not tell the whole story. Several government and factional sources say the Agriculture Directorate clashes were only the latest episode in political operations that had begun months earlier to change factional influence over these lands. One source said: “It is simply the management of the conflict over resources among the militias.”

This was not the first such friction in recent years. Since 2020, the Popular Mobilization Forces Security Directorate, the official umbrella for all armed factions in Iraq, has arrested militia leaders who once played a role in fighting ISIS and closed their offices in Baghdad.

This happened with Saraya Taliat al Khorasani, led by Ali al Yasiri and his deputy Hamid al Jazairi, as well as the Mukhtar Army faction led by Wathiq al Battat.

Before them came the arrest of Hamza al-Shammari, who had been a central figure in tourism activity between Baghdad and Beirut and was accused of money smuggling and drug trafficking. Several sources spoke of his close ties to Iraqi militias.

Incidents recorded as “the burning of poultry farms in Kut, a hospital in Babil, restaurants in Baghdad, and small companies in Basra” were in fact side effects of friction among armed groups, according to accounts from a security officer, a local official, and a member of an armed faction.

A Shiite leader close to the factions said: “Some armed groups operate as financial portfolios for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but when they obtain funds exceeding the share of the original sponsor, they are punished and removed from the game.”

US analyst Nick Gazette said clashes or arrests that surface from time to time among Iraqi militias are due to one of two things: a feverish struggle over resources, or a punishment carried out by the Revolutionary Guard against leaders or individuals who have broken away from its obedience.

Managing expansion

A number of these group leaders are seen as rebels against the Revolutionary Guard. The closest example often used to refer to them is Aws al-Khafaji, who leads the Abu Fadl al-Abbas faction. He took part in battles against ISIS in the provinces of Salahuddin and Anbar, but “his tongue became harsh toward Tehran.”

A force from the Popular Mobilization Forces Security Directorate arrested Khafaji in July 2019 and closed one of his headquarters in central Baghdad on the grounds that it was “fake.”

Four months later, he was released and said the reason for his arrest was his criticism of the Iranian project in Iraq and his opposition to the killing of young protesters in October 2019.

Hisham Dawoud, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, tends to see the repeated friction among the factions not merely as incidental struggles over influence or resources.

At its core, he says, it reflects deep internal shifts in the structure of these forces and their transition from a phase of “formation” to one of “repositioning” inside the state and society.

But he stresses that “the first thing that must be established is that these factions, especially those loyal to Iran, do not operate in a vacuum and do not have absolute freedom to shape reality according to their will.”

Sajjad Salem, a former member of parliament, says the assumption that helps explain factional friction lies in understanding the depth of the struggle over economic resources.

Influence is not only about the leaders of these groups, but also about a broad network operating beneath them, including social and tribal notables, traders, and an army of mid-level public sector employees. All of them have shifting interests, “and whenever they intersect, a spark of violence flashes. Usually, the Revolutionary Guard resolves the disputes.”

Just as it regulates the rhythm of competition, the Revolutionary Guard reaps the rewards of militia expansion on Iraqi territory. The “financial portfolios” grow as key resources for Iran, while military facilities needed for regional expansion are built simultaneously.

These areas were essential for establishing “training camps that hosted fighters of different nationalities from countries in the Axis of Resistance in recent years, along with missile and drone warehouses, private prisons, interrogation centers for opponents of Iran, and operational command centers,” according to leaders in two armed groups.

One of the two men said: “Every military facility was surrounded by fields, investment projects, and tourist resorts where the community of faction members and multiple circles of beneficiaries around them were active.”

In the latest war, the field advantage of this geographic expansion was exposed. Facilities were used to launch rocket or drone attacks from fields in southern and western Iraq, in areas near the border strip with Gulf Arab states that were hit by dozens of drone and missile attacks.

Around Baghdad, nearby sites were used to attack U.S. targets inside the capital. In the north, attacks were launched from Nineveh and Kirkuk, near targets in the Kurdistan Region.

The life of the factions, a history of integration

The second week of the war. Lawmakers, government officials and officers from various security agencies were joining mourning gatherings and symbolic funerals for Khamenei, who had still not been buried in his own country. Most likely, the occasion provided the time and place for rivals to meet without friction, a truce between two types of allies, one integrated into the state and another waiting in the “resistance.” In the end, everyone seemed to be in the same boat.

The gray zone disappeared from Iraq’s public space. Many people were no longer able to express middle-ground views. A well-known blogger on X told me he had attended a session organized by the Iranian embassy in Baghdad and heard an Iranian diplomat reprimand an Iraqi activist for not writing anything “in defense of Iran.”

Not far from this climate was what happened to Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organization, when members of a tribe in southern Iraq, rumored to have organic ties to armed factions and to be part of the network of loyalty to the Iranian supreme leader, attacked him.

The Shiite factions that had begun integrating into politics do not appear to enjoy Iran’s approval. Iranian anger at them grew as reciprocal strikes escalated during the war. On March 17, 2026, Mohammad Asad Qasir, director of the Iranian supreme leader’s office in Lebanon, criticized “the hesitant positions of Coordination Framework leaders regarding support for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In the November 2025 elections, representatives of armed factions won more than 100 seats in parliament, according to estimates circulating in local media. Since then, the fires of government formation have been burning. Most factions have been fighting over their shares in ministries, and their voices are decisive in determining the identity of the candidate to head the government.

A Shiite leader said: “The representatives of the factions do not monopolize political decision-making inside the Coordination Framework, but they can break the will of any party that does not represent their interests.”

The war coincided with the broadest process of integrating armed factions into official state institutions, both executive and legislative, that Iraq has seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. The same thing has long happened at least once every five years, but with less intensity.

A Shiite official in the National Alliance, the former umbrella that formed the two governments of Nouri al-Maliki, says the state is the natural endpoint for resistance groups, “not necessarily in implementation of the desire of the Americans, who are bothered by uncontrolled weapons.” He adds: “It began with the Americans and ended with us. We are partners in this unintentionally.”

The first process of integrating militias into the state dates back to June 2004, when Paul Bremer, the US “civilian” administrator of Iraq at the time, issued Order 91, which allowed militias to merge into the state under the heading of banning them. The order created what can be seen as the founding moment of the “gray zone” in which Iranian influence flourished in later years.

The order treated militias as if they were security companies, according to a retired Interior Ministry officer who now lives abroad. “The faction would move into the ministries as if it had signed an investment contract, but in essence it was a political penetration,” he says.

Secrets of the integration game

With every wave of integration, new arms emerge outside the official framework, allowing the cycle of redistribution of influence between the institutional inside and the armed outside to continue, accompanied by friction that reflects a competitive growth process.

Dawoud explains that “some of these factions formed directly after 2003, while another section emerged through successive splits within the Sadrist movement, led by Muqtada al Sadr, which in its early days represented a broad incubator for differing currents before breaking apart into independent and hostile formations.”

Between 2005 and 2010, the first institutional penetration occurred, when groups such as the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, affiliated with the Sadrist movement, entered the Interior Ministry and law enforcement agencies, in parallel with the rise of their political influence. At that stage, the scene was not limited to ideological factions. Local groups also emerged, Dawoud says, “closer to war traders, born of social transformations in which tribal solidarity overlapped with the informal economy, producing formations with a mafia-like character.”

The features of a “state within the state” began to appear in the period before ISIS occupied a third of Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, then prime minister, had reached an agreement with Washington for the withdrawal of its forces, and the factions began a new phase of activity, including Asaib Ahl al Haq, while also forming new armed wings.

Dawoud points to a third type of faction that “emerged after the US withdrawal, not before it, and arose with direct support and funding from the state, especially amid the rise in sectarian tensions between 2011 and 2014 and alongside the Syrian crisis.”

He explains that “the specificity of these factions is that they were not formed outside the state, but alongside it, and fed from the beginning on its resources, making them more tied to the logic of rent and less independent in terms of decision-making.”

The major legalization came in the period from 2014 to 2017, when the war against ISIS allowed the victors, who had made thousands of sacrifices to retake territory, to obtain legal integration and unprecedented political and social recognition, despite violations that accompanied the operations of these factions.

Dawoud reinforces this picture by saying that this stage “represented a transition to symbolic and material hegemony, based on the factions’ role in saving the state, especially through the Popular Mobilization Forces, which granted them double legitimacy.”

In recent years, armed factions have expanded into almost every aspect of the state. Their influence has become decisive in ministries and border crossings. From under their umbrella have come commercial contracts, investments and local financing networks. The number of affiliates has swollen to unprecedented levels, Dawoud notes, “turning them into a social and economic force, not merely a military formation.”

Many supporters of the Coordination Framework say that talk of armed groups’ influence inside the state is “exaggeration produced by regional narratives.” But the latest war between the United States and Iran erased the boundaries separating militias from the state.

Former lawmaker Salem said: “The militias are the ones ruling Iraq. This is a basic principle of Iranian influence, even if the prime minister is a figure accepted internationally and regionally.”

In the end, the factions will appear to have rolled like a small snowball inside the state 20 years ago, growing larger each time they integrated into it. From Salem’s perspective, what happened proves the error of the American view “that granting power can tame the factions’ behavior and limit Iranian influence.”

This view reached an advanced stage with the arrival of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as Iraq’s prime minister in 2022, when “Washington imagined that Baghdad would carry out a soft domestication of uncontrolled weapons inside the state,” according to a former government official.

The integration of Iraqi factions into the state became the Revolutionary Guard’s “success story” in Baghdad. Gazette believes “Iraq is the ideal environment for the emergence of factions, and perhaps an ideal opportunity for the Revolutionary Guard, especially with their integration into Iraqi state institutions.”

According to Gazette, the Revolutionary Guard is effectively “preparing a cadre of state employees ideologically before integrating them into public life inside Iraqi state institutions, ensuring near absolute loyalty on ideological and material grounds as well.”

Dawoud says: “In this context, Sudani’s rise can be understood as an expression of the factional-political balance. Networks of influence and financial capacity to absorb the demands of factions with overlapping interests.”

These interests “sometimes send bags of money to those objecting to the balance deal, even if they are in Tehran,” according to a Shiite leader.

Changing skins, more gains?

Throughout the weeks of war, the Green Zone came under hundreds of rocket and drone attacks, most of them targeting the US embassy and government facilities. While Washington had expected Sudani’s government to preserve the usual rules of engagement during the 12-day war in July 2025, the relationship between them broke against the hard rock of the factions.

This war helped remove Iraqi ambiguity over groups outside the state, because they are positioned inside it. For months, Sudani had been struggling to secure a second term in office, relying on a parliamentary bloc that won about 45 seats in the latest legislative elections, more than half of them held by armed factions loyal to Iran.

Sudani leads the Reconstruction and Development bloc, the biggest Shiite winner, an uneven alliance that includes parties and armed groups. Among them are Faleh al-Fayyad, who heads the Popular Mobilization Forces Authority, Ahmed al-Asadi, commander of Kataib Jund al-Imam, and Haider al-Gharawi, commander of the Ansar Allah al Awfiya militia.

They have come to be seen as part of Iran’s striking force that carried out attacks in Iraq during the war.

How do these factions integrate into government institutions while simultaneously carrying out attacks against their will? There are different explanations, but the result is one.

In the testimony of a former Iraqi government official, a government force arrested a small cell of armed men specialized in installing and launching drones shortly after they carried out an attack on the US embassy. During the investigation, the leader of one faction submitted a “strange request” to the government: “I need information about one member of the cell. He is a member of my faction, but I did not assign him this mission.”

In Iraq, this was one of the riddles invented by the country’s Shiite groups. There is a political and economic structure for the armed faction that integrates into the state, while the combat elite remains outside the state, “resisting the state itself.”

The initial understanding, according to overlapping sources, was that the Revolutionary Guard forms a “striking force of elite fighters belonging to multiple factions who work under its command and carry out attacks without referring back to local leaders.” But the picture closer to reality is that Iranian officers, especially those active in the regional Quds Force, manage special groups inside each faction.

Salem agrees with this view. He says: “Iran deals with each Iraqi militia separately. Inside each of them are groups that follow Iran, not their local commander.” He adds: “Iran deals with Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen as one scene in a centralized way. But in Iraq, influence is managed by fragmentation.”

In April 2025, Shiite groups said the Revolutionary Guard had asked them to “do what is necessary” to avoid conflict with the United States, including handing over their heavy weapons. In March 2026, other groups said they had agreed to a truce that included halting attacks on the US embassy.

In fact, with special groups inside these factions that hierarchically follow the Revolutionary Guard, faction leaders can conclude agreements that include handing over weapons, halting attacks and reaping their political gains, without that meaning anything on the ground.

One cannot overlook the US Treasury Department sanctions in mid-April, when it accused Asaib Ahl al-Haq of using Iranian drones to attack US forces in northern Iraq through a faction leader named Safaa Adnan.

Since his strong participation in Mohammed Shia al Sudani’s government, Qais al Khazali has been trying to change his political language, suggesting he can also change his essence. But “to what extent can the process be considered more than a change of skin?” said a former US State Department official who had been interested in following “the striking transformations in the career of the man who split from Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement in 2006.”

The day after the war in Iraq

Since the announcement of a ceasefire and the faltering negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the Americans have been exerting harsh pressure to change the essence of rule in Baghdad. But Salem believes the war showed “who actually rules Baghdad,” referring to the factions. Whatever the outcome of the talks in Islamabad, he says, “Tehran has won Baghdad completely.”

Still, Dawoud imagines the “day after” the war, if the influence of factional forces is strengthened, as one in which Iraq’s central state “will not head toward total collapse, nor toward firm cohesion, but toward a transitional model of a central state that monopolizes rent, while in practice it is distributed among multiple networks of influence.”

Pressuring American messages have forced Shiite parties onto calculated paths in forming the new government and are pushing toward winning the battle with the Iranians by neutralizing the Popular Mobilization Forces from the ruling institution. But Tehran has so far shown strong resistance.

This is the real test for the leaders of the Coordination Framework. They are reaching a crossroads between protecting their growing influence within a new deal not far from regional changes, or protecting weapons as the means to reap new gains.

Gazette suggests a classical model, when American militias that emerged during the War of Independence in 1776 became the US National Guard. But he finds it difficult to apply this comparison to Iraq because of “the ideological narrative of Shiite groups.”

Because “ideology is not everything in Iraq,” as a senior political official in the Coordination Framework says, the possible transformation of Popular Mobilization Forces groups would be a hybrid of interest and loyalty.

Dawoud says: “The shape of the coming state will not be a post-militia state, but a state redefining itself by managing the space of the factions, not by eliminating them, inside the political system.”

In Baghdad, the ruling coalition is seen as an adversary that never stops fighting, refuses to disarm, and seeks to strike political deals with its surroundings, reflecting the broader picture in the region: neither war nor peace between the United States and Iran. The soldiers in the Green Zone mural of the “inevitable fall of meteors” will seem like an expressionist painting of the Coordination Framework leaders, carrying rifles to protect their gains, but with no intention of firing.