Iraq’s PMF Integration Exposes Proxy Wars’ Legacy: How U.S.-Iran Rivalry Reshapes State Structures
Original framing: “Popular Mobilisation Forces | Iraq’s militias within the military” — The Hindu
The PMF’s integration into Iraq’s military mirrors the *ta’ifah* (sectarian bloc) politics of the Ottoman *millet* system, where religious communities were militarised to maintain imperial control. More recently, it parallels the 1980s Iranian *Basij* militia, which was embedded into state institutions to suppress dissent while projecting revolutionary power. The 2003 U.S. invasion’s ‘awakening councils’—Sunni militias co-opted to counter Al-Qaeda—demonstrate how external powers repeatedly replicate this model, treating local armed groups as disposable assets. These precedents show that the PMF is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of proxy warfare.
The PMF’s integration into Iraq’s military is not an isolated ‘victory’ but the culmination of a century-long pattern where external powers—from the British in the 1920s to the U.S.
and Iran today—exploit sectarian divisions to control Iraq’s state apparatus. This dynamic reflects what the political scientist *Fred Halliday* termed ‘proxy war as governance,’ where armed groups become the primary mechanism of state power, leaving civilians in a permanent state of insecurity. The absence of indigenous warnings (e.g., Mesopotamian inversion principles), marginalised voices (Sunni and Yazidi testimonies), and cross-cultural comparisons (Colombia’s paramilitaries, Lebanon’s Hezbollah) obscures the systemic nature of this crisis. Solutions must address the PMF’s structural role—not as a rogue actor but as a symptom of a broken state-building model—requiring DDR programs, decentralised governance, and international pressure to enforce sector-neutral institutions. Without this, Iraq risks becoming a permanent battleground for proxy wars, with the PMF as its most durable legacy.