Iraq plays a double game by claiming to integrate Iran-backed Shiite militias into its military forces.

​The government of Iraq appears to be playing a double game with the United States and Iran over the influence of the Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi umbrella organization of predominantly Shiite militias in the country.

Almost three years after a law was passed making Hash al-Shaabi integral part of the Iraqi security forces Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued a decree ordering the Iranian-backed organization to integrate fully into the Iraqi military and abandon previous affiliations.

Mahdi issued an ultimatum which said the offices of Hasd al-Shaabi affiliated militias had to be closed down before July 31 while the militias also must end their practice of erasing checkpoints in areas where they want to increase their influence.

Militias failing to comply with the order will be considered illegal organizations while Mahdi gave them the option to transform into political parties after abandoning their weapons.

​The United States needs to stop mollycoddling the Iraqi regime and must acknowledge that Washington utterly failed to introduce a functioning democracy in Iraq.

​In what is an unsurprising but perhaps disappointing revelation, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US State Department concluded that recent attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure were not orchestrated by the Iran-backed Houthi extremists.

Instead, the State Department said it had evidence that drones used in the attack originated from southern Iraq, an area filled with pro-Iran Shia jihadist groups that fight under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In other words, the IRGC made good on its threats to strike the United States and its allies and sought to divert blame onto its proxies in Saudi’s troubled southern neighbour Yemen. The reason is clear: to protect Iraq’s image as a “neutral party” when it is Iran’s Trojan horse in the Arab world, working to further Iranian interests and undermine its Arab neighbours.

Three Nineveh Jails Way Over Capacity

Nineveh’s extremely overcrowded detention facilities are holding thousands of prisoners in Iraq, most on terrorism charges, for extended periods in conditions so degrading that they amount to ill-treatment. The authorities should ensure that prisoners are not held in inhuman conditions and that there is a clear legal basis for detentions, Human Rights Watch said today.
 
“The Iraqi government urgently needs to rebuild and rehabilitate its detention facilities,” said Lama Fakih, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Iraq has a duty to ensure that detainees are housed decently, in line with international standards.”
 
Tal Kayf, Faisaliya, and Tasfirat (in the Faisaliya compound), the three pretrial detention facilities in the northern Iraq governorate, have a combined maximum capacity of 2,500 people, according to a senior Iraqi penitentiary expert who requested anonymity. As of late June 2019, they were holding about 4,500 prisoners and detainees. Of that number, 1,300 had been tried and convicted and should have been transferred to Baghdad prisons. The authorities had yet to take the steps needed to transfer them, the expert said, even six months after some were convicted. ​