State of Law Coalition leader Nouri al-Maliki has joined a growing chorus of critics of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government program, unanimously approved by parliament, to restrict arms to state control. Less than a month after the State Administration Coalition, comprising leading Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish forces, gave Zaidi full authority to determine how to handle the issue after Sept. 30 — when the remaining US troops are due to leave Iraq — armed factions, notably Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, rejected the deadline. They argue that their weapons are “ideological” and tied to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” Maliki joined them Wednesday, declaring in televised remarks that “there will be no handover of weapons” after Sept. 30. Instead, he advocated “regulation and containment” of weapons through a mechanism still under discussion. Maliki pointed that distinctions could be drawn among heavy, medium and light arms. His position came despite an earlier warning from the State Administration Coalition that any armed activity outside state authority after Sept. 30 would be dealt with under the counterterrorism law. Shifting Terms A visit to Iraq by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf further complicated the process amid indications that Tehran was unwilling to see all factions surrender their weapons. The government subsequently agreed to a Shiite Coordination Framework committee that would begin talks with armed groups after the end of September to persuade them to establish a mechanism for “regulating weapons, not disarming them,” as Maliki put it. Maliki serves on the three-member committee alongside former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Badr Organization leader Hadi al-Amiri. While Sudani has made no statement on surrendering weapons, Amiri and Maliki have taken turns, using terms such as “regulating,” “freezing” or “deferring” weapons rather than “disarmament.” Maliki’s comments followed Amiri’s description two days earlier of the 2019 Tishreen protests as a “sedition” intended to topple the Shiite political system. Amiri also identified the “resistance” as the so-called “third party” that carried out killings of protesters, leaving thousands dead or wounded, mostly from poor Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and central and southern provinces. Political observers viewed his remarks as a deliberate message that armed factions “were, and remain, the ones protecting the political system when it is threatened.” Akram al-Kaabi, secretary-general of Harakat al-Nujaba, meanwhile said US President Donald Trump was “deluded” if he believed he could achieve a victory in Iraq after failing to do so in Iran. The government has maintained that the deadline for surrendering weapons remains unchanged and coincides with the US withdrawal, saying armed groups could be compelled to comply once the American presence ends and there is no longer justification for carrying arms. Saleh al-Arbawi, head of the Wa’i Movement, told Asharq Al-Awsat that any handover could be circumvented or merely symbolic, saying armed groups follow “a transnational ideology and leadership” and have received no order to relinquish their weapons. The government, he said, faces either confrontation or potentially lengthy dialogue and compromise. He added that the wider the current conflict becomes, the more difficult restricting arms to state control will be.
