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Iraq

The Logic Behind Iraq’s Militia Strike Campaign

2026-03-23

[NationalContext] Since 28 February 2026, US and Israeli airstrikes have hit positions belonging to at least fifteen PMF-affiliated militias across seven Iraqi governorates, from the Syrian border to the Nineveh Plain. The strikes have killed dozens, destroyed ammunition warehouses and communications facilities, and hit groups as different as Kataib Hezbollah, the IRGC’s closest Iraqi instrument, and Hashd al-Shabak, a Shabak village militia rooted in the Nineveh Plain.

At first glance, the breadth of the campaign can make the target set look uneven or hard to read. But the pattern is more coherent than it first appears. The strikes become much easier to understand once they are read through three overlapping lenses: proximity to the IRGC, operational hostility toward US and KRG interests, and the geography in which these militias operate.

The first lens is proximity to Iran’s command structure. The southern Shia factions taking the heaviest and most geographically dispersed strikes are not necessarily the largest or most politically powerful PMF groups. They are the ones most operationally tied to Iranian command structures in the current war. Kataib Hezbollah has been struck in ten locations across five governorates. Badr, the most powerful armed-political movement in the Hashd, has barely been touched.

The second lens is operational hostility. The local minority militias in the disputed territories, especially Shabak and Turkmen formations, are real components of the Iranian-aligned PMF network. But that alone does not explain how heavily they have been hit. These groups have also been among the most active in launching drone and rocket attacks against the Kurdistan Region, including attacks on US military facilities and on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region.

The third lens is geography. Almost every strike has fallen in Iraq’s northern half, above the Baghdad line, but the social and political character of the strike zones varies sharply. In Anbar, southern Shia formations are being hit at exposed border positions in entirely Sunni territory and are suffering the campaign’s heaviest losses. In Nineveh, local Shabak formations are being struck in their own villages, but with far lighter casualties, in part because they can disperse into the communities they come from. In Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu, local Turkmen formations are being hit alongside southern militias in the same coordinated waves. By contrast, the seven Shia-majority governorates south of Baghdad, where the main militias recruit and where their families live, have not been struck at all.

A useful analysis.