Influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today warned against the House military budget, which aims to declare Iraq’s Kurds as well as certain Sunni Arab militias separate “countries” in their own right, to allow the Pentagon to directly arm them.
“In the event of approving this bill by the US Congress, we will find ourselves obliged to unfreeze the military wing and start targeting American interests in Iraq – even abroad,” Sadr cautioned in a statement.
Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army, was disbanded when the US ended its previous occupation of Iraq. He has expressed disquiet over the resumption of US military operations in Iraq, and is even more alarmed that the US Congress is looking to unilaterally declare other factions inside Iraq as countries.
The recognition of the Kurdish Peshmerga and certain Sunni tribal militias as “countries” reflects a desire among Congressional officials to start directly arming them. US law obliges all military aid to a friendly country be provided through that country’s government, and Congress is hoping to circumvent that.
Iraq’s central government has been averse to too much armament being sent to rival factions, particularly the Kurds, as they have made clear they intend to eventually secede, and the US arms could speed the path toward such secession greatly.
Seems the Shia clergy had no problem with "separate Shia countries" when they unleashed their militias earlier in this conflict – so why whine about it now?
not really as Sadr is much more inclined to Iraqi nationalism and not willing to be just an appendage of Tehran as folks running the Iraqi government now seem to be.
But still, if the Iraqi Army had collapsed, the likes of Sistani and Al-Sadr should have just let Iraq disintegrate, rather than open this obvious road to destruction and mayhem. The existence of modern Iraq is not and should never be so important that all of these militias need to be unleashed in order to preserve it.
Preservation of Iraq is not and has never been the US Congress's agenda.