Powerful Iraq Shia party splintering following in-fighting

One of Iraq’s most powerful Shia Islamist parties is reportedly suffering from internal infighting that may lead to some of its members breaking off and creating an opposing splinter party, dividing the group that has been a mainstay of Shia Iran’s religious power politics inside Iraq.

The Supreme Islamic Council (SIC), formerly known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by Shia cleric Ammar Al-Hakim, is due to contest local elections in September this year with general elections following a year later in 2018.

Senior members of the Iraqi National Alliance, a pan-Shia Islamist parliamentary bloc that currently holds sway over the legislature, have said that leadership figures within SIC are planning to break off and create their own party, with an announcement expected in the coming weeks. If true, this means that Al-Hakim would face a similar problem to that faced by rival cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose faction splintered into several groups leaving him weakened.

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Two anonymous sources were cited by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed as having accused Al-Hakim of being a divisive figure within SIC due to his apparent penchant for taking unilateral decisions that disadvantage the older generation of party leaders while favouring more youthful faces.

According to sources within SIC, Al-Hakim has managed to alienate Baqir Al-Zubaidi and Jalal Al-Saghir, two of the most influential players within the organisation, with the latter controlling an SIC-affiliated militia, the Sarayat Ansar Al-Aqeeda group that currently fights under the banner of the state-sanctioned and pan-Shia jihadist paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Made in Iran

However, Al-Hakim may feel justified in his decision-making, particularly as he is a scion of one of Iraq’s most influential Shia families, and therefore he possesses much in the way of political and religious influence over his followers.

SIC is one of the many Shia Islamist parties that now dominate Iraqi politics that were founded and incubated in Iran in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. Established under the leadership of Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakim, the Council adopted the ideological bent of Iranian revolutionary leader and founder of modern day Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and became determined to overthrow the secular nationalist Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

The party was long based out of Iran, and received not only political, but military support. The group was aided by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to set up a militia called “Badr” that helped Tehran in during the eight-year war with Iran. Its current commander and former cabinet minister Hadi Al-Amiri was even caught on camera fighting on the frontlines against his own country.

Badr has since largely splintered off into its own organisation, and has its own political party that largely controls the interior ministry and staffs the Federal Police.

Should another of SIC’s militias decide to split off from the body of the main party and form its own group to contest elections, it would represent a further fracturing and weakening of one of Iraq’s mainstay Shia parties, many of whom are already riven by internal politicking and jockeying for positions of authority in the post-2003 state.