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Iraqi Factions Defy Qaani's Directive to Maintain Calm

A memorial of the names of the victims in Mosul on the anniversary of the city's recapture from ISIS (AFP)
A memorial of the names of the victims in Mosul on the anniversary of the city's recapture from ISIS (AFP)
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Iraqi Factions Defy Qaani's Directive to Maintain Calm

A memorial of the names of the victims in Mosul on the anniversary of the city's recapture from ISIS (AFP)
A memorial of the names of the victims in Mosul on the anniversary of the city's recapture from ISIS (AFP)

Shiite leaders of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) denied reports claiming that the factions agreed to escalate attacks against US troops in Iraq.

Recent reports said there was "defiance" against the directives of the commander of al-Quds Force Esmail Qaani regarding maintaining calm after targeting Erbil airport and Ain al-Assad base.

However, sources confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that a meeting was held last week in Baghdad airport between Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officers and Iraqi Shiite leaders where the two sides agreed on maintaining calm, which was opposed by Hezbollah and Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades.

The sources said that the leaders of the Fatah Alliance and Asaib Ahl al-Haq supported the decision, however, the Sayyid Al-Shuhada Brigades spokesman, Kadhim al-Fartousi, announced that the Iraqi Islamic resistance strongly rejected any mediation regarding halting military operations against the US forces.

The military escalation against the US troops aims to remove them from Iraq, he said, warning that escalation will not be stopped, regardless of pressures on the factions.

According to Iraqi sources, who attended the meeting, the Iranian proposal was met with challenge and opposition.

One of the six faction leaders said: "They could not stay quiet while the death of his predecessor Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a US drone strike went unavenged."

The details from the meeting, confirmed to The Associated Press by three Shiite political officials and two senior militia officials, demonstrate how Iranian-aligned Iraqi militia groups are asserting a degree of independence, sometimes even flouting orders from Tehran.

Iran now relies on Lebanon's Hezbollah for support in reining them in, and there is potential that Iran's new president could play a role in doing the same.

Abu Ali al-Askari brigades take a different path from the rest of the factions, adopting direct and adventurous escalation without agreeing to any political settlement with the other PMF brigades.

The leader of the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades is threatening to postpone the elections scheduled for April 2022, according to The AP.

The sources said that the Iranian officers warned the leaders of the Shiite factions that "continuing the security escalation will end the Shiite rule."

The regional situation is reaching dangerous levels, and the Iranians have sent clear messages to the Iraqis that the situation at the Afghan border requires a stable front in the eastern axis, especially in Iraq, according to a Fatah commander and political advisor of Rule of Law coalition.

The Fatah commander said that major Shiite parties have agreed to a minimum truce until the Iraqi elections, but the situation is getting more complicated because of the decentralization method in which the factions operate.

Three main factors play into the policy of "creative chaos" for the faction's system.

The first is the emerging Shiite cells, which work with the leaders of the traditional factions without direct contact with the Iranians and carry out special operations.

The second is that the factions' strategy separates their rivalry with Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi and their agenda of removing the US forces from the country.

But the third factor constitutes the intense competition for influence over whom to replace Muhandis.

A PMF commander reported that the relationship between factions' leaders is not what it seems, saying there is intense competition.

"It may all seem chaotic, but it is the chaos that created influence in Iraq," he noted.

Several factions see in the new Iranian president Ebrahim Rasisi a more significant opportunity to consolidate influence and stabilize the status of the Popular Mobilization Forces in the same form in which the IRGC operates.

In general, the factions that seek escalation against the government or US interests in Iraq reflect a fundamental shift that was not prominent during the former government and represents an imposition of a new reality on Iraq's security and political conditions.

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Arab World

In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
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In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura

Ayman Jaber’s memories are rooted in every corner of Mhaibib, the village in southern Lebanon he refers to as his “habibti,” the Arabic word for “beloved.” The root of the village’s name means “the lover” or “the beloved.”
Reminiscing about his childhood sweetheart, the 45-year-old avionics technician talks about how the young pair would meet in a courtyard near his uncle's house, The Associated Press said.
“I used to wait for her there to see her,” Jaber recalls with a smile. "Half of the village knew about us.”
The fond memory contrasts sharply with recent images of his hometown.
Mhaibib, perched on a hill close to the Israeli border, was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun province, razing dozens of homes to dust.
The scene has been repeated in villages across southern Lebanon since Israel launched its invasion a month ago with the stated goal of pushing Hezbollah militants back from the border. On Oct. 26, massive explosions in and around Odaisseh sparked an earthquake alert in northern Israel.
Israel says it wants to destroy a massive network of Hezbollah tunnels in the border area. But for the people who have been displaced, the attacks are also destroying a lifetime of memories.
Mhaibib had endured sporadic targeting since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging fire on Oct. 8 last year.
Jaber was living in Aramoun, just south of Beirut, before the war, and the rest of his family evacuated from Mhaibib after the border skirmishes ignited. Some of them left their possessions behind and sought refuge in Syria. Jaber's father and two sisters, Zeinab and Fatima, moved in with him.
In the living room of their temporary home, the siblings sip Arabic coffee while their father chain-smokes.
“My father breaks my heart. He is 70 years old, frail and has been waiting for over a year to return to Mhaibib,” Zeinab said. “He left his five cows there. He keeps asking, ‘Do you think they’re still alive?’”
Mhaibib was a close-knit rural village, with about 70 historic stone homes lining its narrow streets. Families grew tobacco, wheat, mulukhiyah (jute mallow) and olives, planting them each spring and waking before dawn in the summer to harvest the crops.
Hisham Younes, who runs the environmental organization Green Southerners, says generations of southerners admired Mhaibib for its one-or two-story stone homes, some built by Jaber’s grandfather and his friends.
“Detonating an entire village is a form of collective punishment and war crime. What do they gain from destroying shrines, churches and old homes?” Younes asks.
Abdelmoe’m Shucair, the mayor of neighboring Mays el Jabal, told the Associated Press that the last few dozen families living in Mhaibib fled before the Israeli destruction began, as had residents of surrounding villages.
Jaber's sisters attended school in Mays al-Jabal. That school was also destroyed in a series of massive explosions.
After finishing her studies in Beirut, Zeinab worked in a pharmacy in the neighboring village of Blida. That pharmacy, too, is gone after the Israeli military detonated part of that village. Israeli forces even bulldozed their village cemetery where generations of family members are buried.
“I don’t belong to any political group,” Zeinab says. “Why did my home, my life, have to be taken from me?”
She says she can't bring herself to watch the video of her village’s destruction. “When my brother played it, I ran from the room.”
To process what’s happening, Fatima says she closes her eyes and takes herself back to Mhaibib. She sees the sun setting, vividly painting the sky stretching over their family gatherings on the upstairs patio, framed by their mother’s flowers.
The family painstakingly expanded their home over a decade.
“It took us 10 years to add just one room,” Fatima said. “First, my dad laid the flooring, then the walls, the roof and the glass windows. My mom sold a year’s worth of homemade preserves to furnish it.” She paused. “And it was gone in an instant.”
In the midst of war, Zeinab married quietly. Now she’s six months pregnant. She had hoped to be back in Mhaibib in time for the delivery.
Her brother was born when Mhaibib and other villages in southern Lebanon were under Israeli occupation. Jaber remembers traveling from Beirut to Mhaibib, passing through Israeli checkpoints and a final crossing before entering the village.
“There were security checks and interrogations. The process used to take a full or half a day,” he says. And inside the village, they always felt like they were “under surveillance.”
His family also fled the village during the war with Israel in 2006, and when they returned they found their homes vandalized but still standing. An uncle and a grandmother were among those killed in the 34-day conflict, but a loquat tree the matriarch had planted next to their home endured.
This time, there is no home to return to and even the loquat tree is gone.
Jaber worries Israel will again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that he won't be able to reconstruct the home he built over the last six years for himself, his wife and their two sons.
“When this war ends, we’ll go back,” Ayman says quietly. “We’ll pitch tents if we have to and stay until we rebuild our houses.”