Iraq Pushes Ahead with 6-Million-Weapon Disarmament Amid Militia Resistance

The Interior Ministry announced a plan to collect an estimated 6 million weapons held outside official institutions. A deadline of September 30 had been set for armed factions to surrender their arsenals, but the government has now treated that date as the start of a regulatory process rather than a final cutoff.

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The weapons-hand-over drive targets factions largely drawn from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a Shia umbrella group created in 2014 after an order from senior cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to fight the Islamic State. While some PMF units have been incorporated into Iraq’s security forces, others retain independent command chains and receive support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

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Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, a 40-year-old billionaire businessman approved on May 14, has repeatedly stated that the government has no intention of using military force against the militias. The United States, through a June request, asked Baghdad for a clear timetable for bringing weapons under state control and has linked compliance to Iraq’s access to critical dollar flows.

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Negotiations have yielded mixed results. Hard-line Tehran-aligned groups Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba have refused to surrender what they label “resistance weapons.” In contrast, Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and Kataib Imam Ali have reached agreements to surrender or regularise their arms; Saraya al-Salam formally separated from cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement and was integrated into the Iraqi security forces in a ceremony in Samarra earlier this year. The government reports measurable progress within roughly 100 days since al-Zaidi took office, but the continued refusal of key militias underscores a lingering challenge to fully consolidating state control over Iraq’s armaments.

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