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Iraq

Iraq picked an outsider to tame Its militias. He may end ip strengthening the system that created them

2026-06-27

[NationalContext] A sweeping reshuffle of Iraq’s security, financial and border institutions, paired with the slow and partial integration of the Shia armed factions, is rearranging the Coordination Framework’s order from within. The prime minister’s lack of a political base of his own may be precisely what makes it possible.

Ali al-Zaidi has spent his first weeks in office replacing the people who run Iraq’s security and financial institutions. The head of the National Security Service, Abdul Karim al-Basri, better known as Abu Ali al-Basri, was removed in favour of Basim al-Badri, with Zaidi overseeing the handover himself. The national security adviser, Qasim al-Araji, was replaced by Qasim al-Aboudi. Nizar Nasser, who previously ran Iraq’s anti-money-laundering office, took charge of the Central Bank and began work on 22 June, and Adel al-Yasiri replaced Haider Makiya at the National Investment Commission. Further changes have been reported at senior security and provincial posts. All of it has come without a complete government: parliament has confirmed only 14 of 23 ministers, and the two portfolios most central to any reckoning with the armed groups, Interior and Defence, are still unfilled.

The personnel changes sit alongside a broader push. The government issued five directives reorganising the border crossings, closing unofficial routes and widening the role of the intelligence services there, and the Border Crossings Authority rotated 1,905 of its officers and staff within 48 hours. Zaidi cancelled two large projects inherited from Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, a $764 million development at Baghdad airport and a railway scheme. His anti-corruption drive, run through a new Supreme Sovereign Council for Integrity that he chairs, has produced the most prominent arrests of his tenure, beginning with the deputy oil minister for refining affairs, Adnan al-Jumaili, in a case in which the judiciary says it has recovered more than $85 million, some of it cash buried underground. On the armed factions, Muqtada al-Sadr announced the separation of Saraya al-Salam from his movement, Asaib Ahl al-Haq followed with its own disengagement, and Kataib Imam Ali after it, each transferring personnel lists and weapons records to government committees. The two factions widely seen as closest to Iran, Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, have refused, describing their weapons as non-negotiable, and the process has stalled at that point.

Around these moves sits a clear external pressure. Iraq was placed on the Financial Action Task Force grey list on 19 June. The US envoy Tom Barrack visited Baghdad and tied Washington’s disarmament demands to a large economic and investment package, and Zaidi is expected at the White House in mid-July. The changes touch money, intelligence, the borders and the senior security command at once and within weeks of one another, which is what marks them out from ordinary rotation.

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Posted by:badanov

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