Since then, they have played an even bigger role in Iraqi politics and security, effectively emerging as a parallel army. Although they are officially a part of the Iraqi Security Forces and ostensibly under the command of the prime minister, they’re also loyal to Iran’s Islamic Republic and to their own political leaders. They’re also heavily involved in both formal economic activity and crime.

These are not *good actors* just because they opposed the US military occupation of Iraq. They are thuggishly reactionary forces, Shia supremacists devoted to both their own parochial interests and a broader project of clerical rule. They brutally suppressed protests in 2019. They committed torture and mass murder against Sunni Arabs in Iraq and in Syria, where they were allies of Bashar al-Asad’s dictatorship.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/27/iraq-protesters-killed-teargas-canisters

So it should come as no surprise that, in response to the US and Israeli attack against Iran, the PMF have mobilized to fight US and other military forces still in Iraq, where they’ve been combatting the local remnants of ISIS.

And…I’ve seen virtually no news coverage of it. It’s the weirdest thing. Every once in a while, I’ll catch a mention of missiles fired at the airport in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where US forces have operated for years. Or a mention of an attack against a US diplomatic facility in Baghdad. But, otherwise, virtually nothing.

And then I’ll stumble across some footage of, like, an Apache or an A-10 strafing a PMF base and it’s clear that the fighting is actually pretty substantive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/eJYzE9zmRH

It’s the weirdest damn thing. There is a lot of global attention on the war with Iran and the spillover into Iran’s neighbors. Iraq is not a minor country. The fighting does not seem to be all that peripheral. The PMF is not some obscure entity but rather, at least formally, a part of the armed forces of a country trying desperately to remain neutral in order to survive.

And yet I can barely find any news stories in English on this. The PMF (or maybe Iran) just attacked a base and killed at least one French soldier there. This is a big deal. But I can find more footage of drone strikes in Dubai, where the government is arresting people for filming attacks, than I can of Iraq.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/03/13/french-soldier-killed-in-attack-in-iraq-s-kurdistan-region-confirms-macron_6751397_4.html