Report by Ahmad Abdallah, English adaptation by Yasmine Jaroudi
In Iraq, the United States and Iran continue their battle, with the US deploying its forces directly and Iran through its proxies, specifically the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
Who is this resistance?
They are a number of armed groups formed by defectors from the Islamic Dawa Party, which emerged in the 1950s as one of Iraq's most prominent Shia parties.
The splits gave rise to five prominent groups: the Badr Organization, the Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, the Al-Nujaba Movement, and the Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
While all these factions came under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in 2016, under the command of the Iraqi Prime Minister as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, they carried out attacks that the PM condemned.
The largest and most powerful of these factions is the Badr Organization, which is less inclined to launch attacks against US forces as it seeks to maintain its political role based on a large parliamentary bloc.
The Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah, founded by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, whom the United States assassinated alongside Qasem Soleimani in early 2020, coordinates military efforts between the Iraqi resistance and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq also has a military mission and is directed against US forces in Iraq, but its political role has grown to infiltrate parliament and the government.
In 2013, all these factions witnessed defections, giving rise to new armed groups such as the Al-Nujaba Movement, which split from Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, and the Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, which split from the Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah.
In summary, five armed factions operate under the Iranian umbrella in Iraq today.
These five arms have many so-called facade groups, through which they send messages and carry out operations without direct attribution, playing a significant role in the ongoing regional war between Tehran and Washington.