These 3 pro-Iran militia leaders are rabble-rousing protesters at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: Washington Post

As supporters of an Iranian-backed militia stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, three influential men were notably in the crowd. They lead groups that are among Iran’s most powerful allies in Iraq. And they’ve shaken up U.S.-Iraqi relations many times before. Here’s what you need to know.

Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi

Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, who goes by the nickname Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, founded the Shiite militia that is at the center of the current drama: Kataeb Hezbollah. After the U.S. strike on his brigade on Sunday, he’s the one who threatened U.S. forces that there would be a response.

But Mohandis is also now deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), in Arabic called Hashd al-Shaabi, which is an umbrella organization uniting primarily Iran-backed Shiite paramilitary groups. The PMF was founded in 2014, after the prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sistani issued a call for groups to help the Iraqi government fight against the Islamic State.

After kicking out the Islamic State, however, media reports and rights groups have documented alleged abused by PMF abuses in newly liberated Sunni villages and neighborhoods. The revenge violence has allegedly included looting homes and disappearing male residents. Experts have warned that these kinds of sectarian crimes could fuel resentment ripe for the Islamic State’s resurgence.



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/these-3-pro-iran-militia-leaders-are-rabble-rousing-protesters-at-the-us-embassy-in-baghdad/ar-BBYvbJ8?li=BBnbcA1

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So Trump wants to go to war with those who kicked ISIS out.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. There's a pattern here...

"So Trump wants to go to war with those who kicked ISIS out."

Rojava to Baghdad - America's word is *shit* because of Trump (which fits his life-long pattern of everything he says being a lie).

[ToxMarz]

2. How do you say Brooks Brothers riot in Arabic

[stillcool]

4. Saddam's statue?

[stillcool]

3. I'm not even going to attempt...

to find a fact. Iraq was my best teacher in the folly of trying to find out who's doing what to who, when everyone has skin in the game.

[stopdiggin]

5. while we can agree that there is nothing coherent

about Trump's foreign policy (particularly in the middle east) .. there is nothing good at all to be said about the empowerment of Iranian backed militia in Iraq. Another Iranian client state, while maybe slightly preferable to an ISIL caliphate, is certainly not a good outcome .. for the U.S., or any other state in the region.

"So Trump wants to go to war with those who kicked ISIS out."

that's pretty thin stuff .. let's remember that Bashar and Putin also "kicked ISIS out" .. but found time to use chemical weapons on civilians too. And these Shia militias have been thuggish actors toward their own state, and civilians, in their own country for some time now. So this is all largely a matter of "the enemy of my enemy .. today" .. but that hardly makes the Iranian backed militias our (or anyone else's) buddies.

Do we want to go to war with anybody in the middle east right now. Certainly not. (on the other hand we elected a bully boy and an imbecile as our leader,so ...) But let's not pretend like these guys are sympathetic figures either.