The head of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri, revealed a known secret a few days ago: the formation of the Popular Mobilization Units (aka al-hashd al-sha’abi, or sometimes ‘the Shia militias’) began several months ahead of Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s momentous fatwa on June 13, 2014 following the fall of Mosul. Ameri ‘corrected’ the record during a meeting between senior PMU leaders and Maliki on June 28.
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Why is this important?
It’s important for two reasons:
- The weaknesses of the Iraqi Army were known to the Iraqi leadership months ahead of the debacle at Mosul. No tangible steps were taken to structurally address such concerns. The decision taken at the time was to build out new auxiliary forces, hence the PMUs.
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- There may be some evidence that the US government had an early relationship with at least one PMU that was close to Suleimani, an organization that was cultivated and propped-up by his adjunct Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. That PMU is Jund al-Imam. See below for notes on this organization and the possible coordination it had with US forces. The Wall Street Journal once described it (during the Tikrit operation) as “US-backed”.
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NOTES ON JUND AL-IMAM MILITIA:
-Headed by Ahmad Jasim Sabir al-Asadi (AKA Abu Ja’afar al-Asadi, b. 1971, Australian citizen). Official spokesman of the PMUs.
-Org first established by Mehdi Abdul-Mehdi al-Khalisi (AKA Abu Zainab al-Khalisi) in Iran in the early 1980s.
-Al-Khalisi was one of the founding members of Badr Corps; he is credited by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis with the idea of the creation of Badr. Al-Muhandis headed Badr in the mid-1980s until shortly before 2003. The US military arrested al-Khalisi in 2003 and released him in 2005. He died shortly afterwards; his lieutenants claim that the Americans injected him with cancer. They also assert that cadres of Jund al-Imam were targeted for assassination by the Americans.
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-Jund al-Imam claims that they have thousands of fighters that constitute the 6th and 15th brigades of the PMUs. They take credit for destroying Saddam’s tomb in Auja, Tikrit, as well as securing the Speicher Air Base, which they have renamed Abu Zainab al-Khalisi Air Base. One credible source claims that they are responsible for burning down Albu Ajeel village to the east of Tikrit.
-There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that Jund al-Imam receives special attention and support from Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
-At the time of the Tikrit operation, the WSJ described Jund al-Imam as “US-backed”. See
here and
here.
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