Iraq’s popular mobilisation units: intra-sectarian rivalry and Arab Shi’a mobilisation from the 2003 invasion to Covid-19 pandemic

The Popular Mobilisation Units’ (PMU) rise in Iraq resulted from a de facto, post-2003 hybridization of security governance, opposed to an emergency measure to combat Islamic State after 2014. Rather than a cohesive sectarian movement, the PMU moniker granted a government veneer to an array of pre-existing or new militias, representing a decentralized Shi’a Arab mobilisation prior to 2014, symptomatic of Iraq’s divisive patronage politics. Perceived by the US and the Arab world as ‘pro-Iranian Shi’a militias’, as a spoiler to Iraq’s sovereignty, and an Iranian means of securing its control over Baghdad, while some militias began as NSAAs, the PMU have evolved into quasi-state actors by becoming part of the state, but not under its complete control. Ultimately, their power within Iraq is constrained by the other political institutions, such as the electoral cycle, the Shi’a clerical establishment, and a protest movement, in addition to a pandemic, Covid-19.