Iraq cannot restore its sovereignty by disarming militias alone

Iraq is approaching a decisive test of its sovereignty. Following the end of the US-led coalition’s military mission in federal Iraq on 30 September 2026, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has set a new deadline of 30 June 2027 for bringing powerful armed factions under state control. The plan begins with a 90-day halt to military activity before moving towards weapons control and the integration of fighters into official security institutions. Yet the refusal of influential factions to surrender their autonomy reveals a deeper problem. Baghdad is attempting to discipline armed organisations that have become embedded in the political order it seeks to reform.

The distinction matters. Iraq is not dealing simply with armed groups operating beyond the reach of the state. Some factions have obtained formal recognition, access to public resources and political influence while retaining organisational interests of their own. Their relationship with the government is therefore more complicated than the conventional distinction between state forces and insurgents.

The withdrawal of American forces offers Baghdad an opportunity to reclaim authority over national security. However, it also removes an external presence that has shaped Iraq’s strategic environment for years. Meanwhile, Iran-aligned factions continue to regard their weapons as instruments of deterrence against the United States and Israel. Their calculations reflect regional rivalries, but also domestic interests that cannot be reduced to instructions from Tehran.

Iraq’s central challenge, therefore, is not merely to collect weapons. It is to dismantle the political, institutional and economic arrangements that allow armed factions to retain independent power within the state. Without that transformation, disarmament could change the appearance of Iraq’s security institutions while leaving their underlying distribution of power largely intact.

The Post-2003 State That Empowered Its Own Rivals

The roots of Iraq’s militia problem lie in the political order established after the US-led invasion of 2003. The dismantling of existing state institutions, the restructuring of the security sector and the subsequent struggle over political authority created conditions in which armed organisations could acquire influence beyond the battlefield. The expansion of Islamic State in 2014 accelerated this process. As Iraqi forces struggled to contain the group, the mobilisation of volunteers and existing militias became essential to national defence.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), or Hashd al-Shaabi, emerged from this mobilisation and subsequently acquired formal standing within Iraq’s security architecture. Their contribution to the defeat of Islamic State cannot simply be dismissed. Yet their incorporation into state structures did not automatically eliminate the distinct organisational identities, political connections and external relationships of individual factions.

This is the institutional contradiction Baghdad must now confront. The state helped legitimise and accommodate armed organisations that it subsequently found difficult to command. The PMF’s formal status and its estimated strength of approximately 238,000 personnel illustrate the scale of the challenge. Reform involves a substantial security establishment, not a handful of clandestine networks.

Nor is this simply a question of legislative design. Armed factions have developed political constituencies, economic interests and relationships with influential officials. These connections make coercive disarmament politically costly, while the prospect of losing influence gives factions strong incentives to resist reforms that threaten their autonomy.

Consequently, Iraq cannot resolve the problem through security operations alone. The government must also address the political arrangements that reward independent armed power. Otherwise, it risks confronting individual factions while preserving the system that enables new centres of coercive authority to emerge.

Why Formal Integration May Not End Militia Power

The crucial distinction is between incorporating fighters into the state and transferring effective control to it. A militia may receive official salaries, adopt military ranks and operate within a recognised institution without surrendering its independent chain of command. Administrative integration can therefore coexist with operational autonomy.

Iraq’s proposed reform illustrates this difficulty. The government has considered offering up to 35,000 positions in the armed forces and police to personnel who surrender their weapons, alongside measures to regulate salaries, ranks and pensions. Such incentives could encourage individual fighters to enter state service. Yet they would not, by themselves, dissolve the organisational networks through which commanders exercise influence.

The decisive questions are who appoints commanders, who authorises deployments, who controls weapons and intelligence, and who investigates violations. If a faction can still launch attacks without government approval, its formal incorporation has not delivered a genuine state monopoly over force.

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Funding presents another challenge. Public money can strengthen national institutions, but it can also sustain parallel centres of authority when expenditure, recruitment and command arrangements lack effective oversight. Transparent budgets, independently verified personnel records and enforceable disciplinary procedures are therefore as important as weapons collection.

A phased approach remains preferable to indiscriminate coercion. An attempt to disarm every faction simultaneously could provoke armed confrontation, weaken the government and endanger civilians. However, gradual integration must have measurable conditions. Weapons inventories, verified transfers, unified command procedures and penalties for unauthorised operations should establish whether power is actually shifting to Baghdad.

The government must also distinguish among factions. Some may accept institutional integration if their political interests remain protected; others may view independent armed capacity as indispensable to their regional mission. Treating them as a single organisation would obscure these differences and weaken the prospects for negotiated reform.

Ultimately, the test is behavioural rather than administrative. The state must demonstrate that its orders are binding, its financial controls are effective and its laws apply equally to every armed organisation.

Sovereignty Must Mean More Than Choosing Between Washington and Tehran

Iraq’s reform effort also faces a geopolitical dilemma. Washington wants Baghdad to prevent armed factions from attacking American interests and threatening regional partners. Tehran, meanwhile, has strategic reasons to preserve relationships with Iraqi groups that provide political influence and potential leverage against its adversaries. Neither relationship, however, fully explains the domestic roots of militia power.

The danger is that disarmament becomes identified with an American campaign to weaken Iran rather than an Iraqi effort to strengthen its own institutions. Such a perception could encourage resistance among factions that regard their weapons as protection against external intervention. Conversely, allowing groups to conduct independent military operations would leave Iraq vulnerable to retaliation and undermine its ability to determine when the country becomes involved in regional conflicts.

Baghdad must therefore resist two forms of subordination. It cannot allow domestic armed factions to exercise an effective veto over national security decisions. Nor should its institutional reforms be judged solely by whether they satisfy Washington or constrain Tehran. Sovereignty requires the capacity to maintain relations with both powers while determining independently the limits of their influence.

That objective demands a broader political settlement. Iraq needs a unified and accountable security command, transparent public financing, credible judicial enforcement and political institutions that do not depend on armed patronage. It also needs regional de-escalation so that domestic reform is not repeatedly derailed by external confrontation.

The June 2027 deadline offers a timetable, not a guarantee. Success should be measured by whether armed organisations lose their capacity to act independently, not by how many fighters receive official identification cards or how many weapons appear on government registers.

Iraq cannot restore sovereignty simply by bringing militias into the state. It must ensure that the state, rather than the militias, determines how power is exercised. Until that distinction becomes real, disarmament risks becoming another administrative compromise with an entrenched political order. The ultimate measure of Iraqi sovereignty is straightforward: no armed faction, domestic or foreign-backed, should possess the power to decide when the country goes to war.

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