Abu Alaa al-Walai: Tehran’s Loyal Iraqi Militiaman

Abu Alaa al-Walai: Tehran’s Loyal Iraqi Militiaman

“All Americans in Iraq will be hostages if a war broke out between the U.S. and Iran. Because we will stand with Iran, period,” said Abu Ala’a al-Walai, the prominent Iraqi Shia militia leader, in a TV interview last August (Alalam TV, August 28, 2019; YouTube, August 29, 2019).

This obvious threat came months before tensions between the United States and the Iraqi Shia militias would escalate due to the Shia militias attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in late December 2019 and early January 2020. The attack was followed by the U.S. killing of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani as he arrived in an unannounced visit to Baghdad on January 3. Soleimani was the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and the main leader of the Shia militia movement in the Middle East. He was killed alongside Jamal Ja’afar al-Ibrahim (better known as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis), the deputy leader of the Iraqi al-Hashd al-Sha’abi (Popular Mobilization Units-PMU) (Al Arabiya, January 3).

Al-Walai is one of the militia leaders who was close to Soleimani. His August threat has not been fulfilled, but it was an early indication on where things were headed. Soon after the death of Soleimani, General Esmail Ghaani was appointed as his successor. Al-Walai was one of the first Iraqi Shia militia leaders to meet him a few days after his appointment (Arabi21, January 11).

Al-Walai is the leader of the Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada’a (KSS) militia. It is one of the biggest Shia militias in Iraq, believed to include about 5,000 fighters. KSS was one of the militias that fought in the campaign against the Sunni extremist group Islamic State (IS) between 2014 and 2017. Much like other Shia militias, it remained deployed in several Sunni populated areas in western and northern Iraq. KSS is also deployed in Syria where it has been fighting, alongside other Shia militias, on the side of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad since 2012.

Prisons and Insurgencies

Abu Ala’a al-Walai’s real name is Hashim Bnayan al-Saraji. He is believed to be in his late forties. He started his political life as a member of the Islamic Dawa party, which was the parent organization of 20^th century Shia Islamist organizations in Arab countries. Al-Walai claims that as a Dawa member, he was involved in opposition activities against the government of the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, which led to his arrest. He claims that he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. After 10 years imprisonment, he was released as part of the comprehensive amnesty issued by Hussein in late 2002 (YouTube, July 6, 2017).

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Walai joined the Shia insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition forces. The Shia insurgency was dominated by the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. Al-Walai was a member of other Shia militias that had stronger ties to Iran, which the United States referred to as the Special Groups. Although those groups became active in 2006, al-Walai and a few other Shia militia leaders claim that they actually started attacking coalition forces in 2003 (Noon Post, January 12, 2015).

Those groups eventually evolved into two large organizations: Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), led by Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, and Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) (see MLM, February 4). Al-Walae was a member of the latter. As a result of his active role as a leader within the ranks of KH, al-Walai was arrested by U.S. forces. He claims that he was imprisoned for three years and was the last Iraqi prisoner released by U.S. forces during their withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011 (Noon Post, January 12, 2015).

 Wars Beyond Borders

As the revolution in Syria turned into a civil war, Iraqi Shia militias joined the fight alongside the Syrian regime. These groups claimed to be defending Shia holy sites in Syria against the extremist Sunni Islamists of IS and other opposition groups. In order to have greater flexibility and maneuverability, Shia militias began to split and grow at the same time. By the time he was released from prison in 2012, al-Walai seemed to have acquired enough credentials to start his own militia. He left (KH) on good terms to found KSS. The main Shia holy site in Syria is the Shrine of al-Saida Zainab, located on the southern outskirts of Damascus. First, Iraqi Shia militias were reported to have been deployed there and fought against predominantly Sunni opposition groups. Shortly thereafter, it turned out that the Iraqi militias were deployed way beyond that part of Syria, to various fronts across the country. Al-Walai once stated proudly that part of his militia was stationed in southern Syria, not far from the Israeli borders (YouTube, September 10, 2019).

In another early move that illustrated the senior position they occupied within the Shia militia movement, al-Walai’s group was one of the first Iraqi militias to mobilize against IS in Iraq. While most of the militias moved after the major IS advances of June 2014, when the group overran Mosul, Tikrit, and other predominantly Sunni cities, KSS had actually mobilized months earlier (Almirbad, September 11, 2014).

Al-Walai stated that he met with then-Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki after the fall of Fallujah (only 50 miles west of Baghdad) in January 2014 and joined other militias in a plan to secure areas around Baghdad from the dire threat of IS. Although IS threatened to invade Baghdad and the predominantly Shia areas of southern Iraq after it made significantly larger advances six months later, the group remained in the Sunni areas of the country (Almirbad, September 11, 2014).

No major battle happened near Baghdad, but Shia militias organized and consolidated the defenses as large army and police units either collapsed or suffered substantial losses in moral. But the militias’ practices drew criticism from human rights groups due to the harsh measures they used against civilians in Sunni areas around Baghdad that were perceived as IS-friendly (HRW, August 4, 2014).

When the PMU was formed in June 2014 as an umbrella organization of the Shia militias, al-Walai and his group joined. KSS became involved in the fighting against IS on many fronts. Al-Walai himself was injured during the fight near Tikrit in 2015, but he recovered quickly. The PMU used the fatwa issued by Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani after the fall of Mosul and Tikrit in June 2014 to gain legitimacy and attract new recruits. Although the fatwa called upon Iraqis to join the security forces, the PMU was the body that organized new recruits. New armed groups were formed within the PMU, but the militias who benefited the most were those who were already established and had solid support from Iran, like al-Walai’s KSS. Despite being part of the PMU, al-Walai and his KSS clearly state that they are part of the “Islamic Resistance,” a term that refers to their ideological commitment to fight, under the leadership of Iran and its supreme leader, against the United States, Israel, and any other perceived enemy. [1]

The Attack on the Embassy

As the Iraqi militias were preparing to launch the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, al-Walai was again the first to compare the move with the siege of the U.S. embassy in Tehran 40 years earlier (Baghdad Today, December 31).

While the attack took place, it did not develop into the hostage taking that al-Walai threatened months earlier. As the United States killed Soleimani and al-Muhandis, al-Walai turned to support efforts aimed at expelling the U.S. and foreign forces from Iraq. U.S. and other anti-IS coalition forces were deployed to Iraq in 2014 to help its government face IS. Yet al-Walai and other Shia militia leaders have always accused the U.S. of supporting IS. They use their official platforms and airtime in the media to spread such conspiracy theories (Arabi21, October 5, 2015).

Supporting the Prime Minister

Al-Walai is also a prominent supporter of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who rose to the position in 2018 and resigned on November 29, 2019. However, he remains PM in a caretaker role at the time of this writing. When a widespread uprising broke out last October calling for genuine reform and an end to the sectarian governing system and corruption, al-Walai and his co-militia leaders came out against it. While militias other than KSS took a larger role in the bloody crackdown against the protesters, al-Walai was tipped to be one of the masterminds behind the repression campaign (Al-Ain, January 23). For his pro-PMU policies throughout his time in office, Abdul-Mahdi was hailed by al-Walai as a blessing to the Iraqi people (Buratha News, February 22).

When Adnan al-Zurfi, a pro-U.S. Shia politician, was designated as prime minister, al-Walai and other Shia militias issued a joint statement pledging to oppose his appointment (Nas News, April 4). Al-Zurfi failed to form a government. At the time of this writing, the new candidate for prime minister is Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who is perceived as better able to strike a balance between the United States and Iran. He is currently trying to form a coalition government. Although al-Walai’s organization has only one seat in the 328 member Iraqi parliament, he has a significantly larger influence on the process of selecting and supporting any prime minister through his position in the Shia militia movement and his links to Iran. Events in the past showed that al-Walai is frequently ahead of events, therefore it will be useful to monitor what he signals in the future.

Conclusion

The PMU’s militias can be divided into those loyal to Iran and those which are more Iraqi-oriented and have links to Sistani. The first group is referred to as al-Hashd al-Walai (the Loyal Mobilization Units). Al-Walai, which means loyal in Arabic, is a reference to these militias’ loyalty to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. More than anyone else, al-Walai represents this group. In fact, he started using the name al-Walai by the time that the division within the organization emerged, showing how he embraced that description and identity. He was never ashamed of his militia’s links to Iran and the fact that it followed the Iranian supreme leader’s teachings.

It is important to understand here that those militias’ loyalty to Khamenei does not necessarily mean that they are against Sistani. They frequently show their respect to Sistani and, as mentioned previously, use his fatwa as a source of legitimacy. Yet while they respect Sistani, they still balance his influence with their links to Khamenei and Iran accordingly. Iran and Khamenei have always respected Sistani and acknowledge his religious and social authority in Iraq. Those terms of the relationship were facilitated by Sistani’s tendency not to become involved in politics. The coexistence between the two influences will be tested in the coming days. On April 23, four PMU militias that were formed by clerics close to Sistani announced their withdrawal from the PMU. Reports suggest that the action was due to new leaders who were elevated to higher responsibility after the killing of al-Muhandis (Al Jazeera, April 23). Al-Walai’s position in any possible clash of loyalties will be, as his name suggests, beyond any doubt.

Meanwhile, the Shia militias seemed to have launched a new anti-U.S. strategy. Al-Walai announced his unequivocal support for the attack on the U.S. section of the Camp Taji base north of Baghdad, where two U.S. and one UK soldiers were killed (Rudaw, March 12). However, he did not claim responsibility for the attack. An unknown group called Usbat al-Thaereen (The League of Revolutionaries) took credit (Aliraqnet, March 19).

Pursuant to their goal of driving the United States out of Iraq, the Shia militias need groups that have no announced links to politics in order to not embarrass the Shia-led Iraqi government, which is under pressure from Washington. A new militia with an unknown leadership will also make it harder for the United States to target certain figures for retribution or deterrence measures. But those new militias are believed to be a result of a reorganization of existing Shia militias. And men like al-Walai will always play a central role in confronting the United States in Iraq.

Notes