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Many of the proxies, patrons, and relationships of support generated in past periods of proxy intervention were very much present when ISIS began its rapid advance in 2014. However, the political and security crisis generated by ISIS’s takeover of large parts of northern and central Iraq further added to the number of potential proxies, and to the complexity of the proxy environment.

In the span of roughly a week in June 2014, ISIS seized a large swath of northern and central Iraq, from the Syrian border to the perimeter of oil-rich Kirkuk, from the second largest city of Mosul nearly to the edge of the Baghdad belt, the territory just north of Baghdad.¹ In the face of these rapid advances, the Iraqi security forces collapsed and fled. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa, calling on Iraqi citizens to defend the Iraqi state.²

This existential threat, and �������ٲ��Ծ�’s call to arms, sparked mass mobilization across Iraq’s diverse constituencies, parties, and forces. Most prominent was the mobilization and formation of the PMF, whose official government salary numbers have hovered around 125,000 since late 2016 (the number of Hashd may be higher if unofficial, affiliated forces and groups are also included).³ While the PMF is most known for the pro-Iran Shi’a forces that form its leadership,⁴ it includes some 50 or more groups, which span the full spectrum of Iraq’s ethnic, political, and sectarian diversity, and not all of whom identify or align with Iran.⁵

Much of the attention has focused on the PMF, but other groups and constituencies also seized the moment, adding to the plethora of sub-state forces and competing proxy alignments. Kurdish parties and forces affiliated with the Kurdistan Regional Government (the KRG) also mobilized against the ISIS threat and used the crisis moment to expand their stockpiles and regular salaried forces. KRG forces—to include official Ministry of Peshmerga forces, as well as forces associated with the PUK and the KDP parties—received support not only from the United States and Coalition countries,⁶ but also from Iran⁷ and Turkey.⁸

The PKK—the transnational Kurdish militant group engaged in an armed conflict with Turkey—had long been present in parts of north and central Iraq and self-mobilized against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. The PKK’s victories against ISIS on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border gave them greater territorial control, a number of local partners, and a strange-bedfellows mixture of patrons and allies (both Iran and the United States), all of which further complicated conflict dynamics and proxy considerations in the post-2014 period.⁹

Within both the PMF and Kurdish blocks, there were also a number of smaller, local forces, mostly mobilized from areas threatened or liberated from ISIS.¹⁰ They were ultimately bit players in the larger proxy game afoot, but they came with their own independent political valences, local interests, and international backers, which added to the complexity of local-to-national proxy competition. This included various religio-ethnic forces—for example, Christian,¹¹ Yezidi, Shabak, or other minority forces—as well as a range of Sunni tribal forces and other groups mobilized around a local political leader.¹²

Many of these smaller forces and minority groups mobilized independently, but quickly came under the salary or patronage of either the Peshmerga or of individual Hashd forces (and sometimes swapped between those camps).¹³ Some of them mobilized with the support and encouragement of foreign backers. The United States supported a small, Sunni tribal mobilization program in Ninewa and Anbar, known as the Tribal Mobilization Force (TMF) in U.S. policy circles,¹⁴ and Turkey supported the forces of former Ninewa Governor Atheel Nujaifi around Mosul.¹⁵ TMF will be used hereinafter to distinguish U.S.-supported tribal forces, as there were other Sunni tribal forces who received no U.S. support.¹⁶

After the PMF law passed in November 2016 the only legal route to have a standing force (outside of the Peshmerga) was via the PMF.¹⁷ Many of these groups then formally came under the PMF, with salaries and support provided through the Iraqi budget; however, this did not necessarily mean that the foreign ties and support ceased. Nujaifi’s forces continued to receive support (primarily training) from Turkey after they became part of the PMF.¹⁸ U.S. and Coalition support to some of the Sunni tribal and other minority forces within the PMF continued at least through 2019, including training, equipment, weapons, and some subsidization of their salaries.¹⁹

Lastly, amidst this stew of local, hybrid, and sub-state forces (hybrid denoting groups like the PMF and the KRG parties that blend aspects of formal power and authority with that held outside of, and in competition with the state),²⁰ there also was the potential for sub-parts of the state to act as proxies for foreign patrons. As the background section suggested, officials and even entire Iraqi ministries and agencies have frequently been co-opted and viewed as under the control of external states since 2003.²¹ As Iraq historian Toby Dodge has argued, the post-2003 state that emerged was less of a prototypical or Weberian state and more of a shell or an arena for competition among a series of biddable actors, all open to external support and influence.²² The collapse of state forces in 2014 and the atmosphere of political crisis generated by ISIS’s takeover made these already porous Iraqi state institutions even more susceptible to pressure and cooption by external powers. The literature on proxy warfare has tended to identify proxies as either states as a whole²³ or as the non-state rebel, insurgent, or terrorist groups contesting them.²⁴ However, in Iraq, as in much of the Middle East, it may be more appropriate to consider institutions, officials, and subparts of the Iraqi state as separate and equally biddable proxies.

The end result of all of this mobilization and proliferation was that by 2016, Iraq was awash with an even greater number of potential proxies or surrogates than ever before. There were not only more armed parties available, but much more to fight over. The 2014 crisis created huge risks and huge opportunities for a range of domestic and international parties. The potential gains and losses to be had in this moment created something like a zero-sum competition among Iraqi stakeholders, which in turn would affect the degree to which external agendas might affect their behavior.

ISIS’s takeover of large parts of central and northern Iraq, and then the question of who would have authority or influence over these areas after ISIS was ousted, put up for grabs a number of strategic and hotly contested areas in Iraq.²⁵ The areas that might be plausibly defended or claimed back from ISIS (and then dominated in their wake) included the Disputed Territories (the belt of territory that both the KRG and Baghdad claim),²⁶ the economic hub of Mosul, the ideologically significant Shi’a Shrine city of Samarra, key transit routes that crisscrossed the country, and critical border areas in Ninewa, Anbar, and Diyala.

Control over these areas could yield significant strategic and economic dividends, from control of oil fields and pipelines in Kirkuk, to the ability to profit from important commercial routes and resources within liberated areas. Many of the transit routes and border areas offered lucrative smuggling routes, as well as access to Syria, which was crucial for both Iran and the United States to maintain access and supply lines to partners there.²⁷

These areas also held crucial votes and political opportunities. Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution provides for an eventual (and long-postponed) referendum to determine the status of Kirkuk and other Disputed Territories based on the “will of their populations.”²⁸ Whoever controlled these areas might be able to shift the population demographics and voting opportunities within them, helping decide a question central to the shape and writ of the Iraqi state.²⁹

Beyond the Disputed Territories issue, many commentators have noted that the 2018 elections departed from the political trends of the prior 15 years because voting did not appear to be as pre-determined by ethno-sectarian blocks.³⁰ This was even more so in areas of flux like the liberated areas, where high levels of displacement and the overall sense of political crisis had upended local political dynamics.³¹ As a result, asserting authority in these liberated areas offered those with both national and local political ambitions the chance to advance their base, or to undermine that of rivals.³²

Last but certainly not least, the fact that these areas were a checkerboard of diverse ethnic and sectarian communities, including Kurdish, Turkmen, Christian, Shabak, and Yezidi communities, also drove competition and intervention.³³ These communities viewed not only the threat by ISIS, but also the prospect of competing, rival groups taking control of their territory in ISIS’s wake, as existential threats. External actors were also motivated by identity or solidarity ties to these groups and symbolically important areas. Threats to Samarra, to Shi’a pilgrimage routes, and to Shi’a communities in Salah ad-Din and Diyala helped fuel rapid Iranian support to counter ISIS in its initial stages, while the threatened genocide of Christian and Yezidi communities in the Ninewa Plains gained international attention, and galvanized previously reluctant Western states.³⁴ As Shi’a PMF forces closed in on the divided Turkmen city of Tal Afar, Turkey declared that it would protect Turkmen groups within it.³⁵

For all of these reasons, ISIS’s advances and then its expulsion set off heated competition to control these areas, or to prevent others from doing so.³⁶ For many of the smaller, minority groups, prevailing in that competition was viewed as an existential question, fundamental to their community’s integrity and political survival. They mobilized their own forces in response and engaged in fierce competition with other rival sub-groups, allying with whichever national or international patron(s) seemed best able to protect their survival.³⁷ In the Ninewa Plains, at least five different ethnically or politically aligned Christian or Shabak local forces mobilized and competed against each other.³⁸ A similar dynamic emerged in Sinjar, with an even greater number of local Yezidi forces variously aligned to different Iraqi or external backers.³⁹

For national forces and political parties, the stakes were equally high. With so many critical components of the Iraqi state up for grabs, the way that these competing claims and contests were resolved could reset power balances within Iraq, profoundly shifting which groups held the upper hand for years to come. The most active groups to compete for and assume more territory and clout in this post-2014 period have been the main sub-state forces that had the most to gain from upsetting the status quo—the two main KRG parties and their affiliated forces, and the larger Hashd forces.⁴⁰ While they nominally supported the state and helped defeat ISIS, these hybrid forces more often pursued their own interests at the expense of state authority at both a micro- and macro-level.⁴¹

In the course of the defense against ISIS, Kurdish forces assumed control of significant parts of the Disputed Territories, including Kirkuk, and ultimately expanded their territory by 40 percent (until Baghdad retook these areas in October 2017).⁴² When asked about the KRG’s advances, specifically the Iraqi army’s inability to secure Kirkuk, KRG President Masoud Barzani was very candid: ​“I saw it in an opportunistic way.”⁴³

The larger Shi’a PMF forces were equally aggressive in expanding their territorial reach. As areas were liberated from ISIS, PMF forces moved in to hold liberated areas on behalf of the government, nominally freeing up Iraqi forces to push forward against ISIS. This put PMF forces in charge of key transit routes and strategic areas across central and northern Iraq. By late 2017, they were either in control of or maintained free access across Diyala, in large parts of Salah ad-Din, as well as in key pockets of territory in Kirkuk and Ninewa, and on the border and in key checkpoints in Anbar.⁴⁴

This competition for territorial control was closely connected to the promise of future political control, in both a local and national sense. The political and security vacuum created by ISIS’s expansion and expulsion created the potential for lines to be redrawn and power balances shifted, and for groups to be either excluded or empowered, at both a national and local level. That these opportunities for territorial and economic expansion were so closely followed by the more open 2018 elections only heightened the stakes, and the sense that there would be clear winners and losers from this transitional moment. This atmosphere of zero-sum competition is important for understanding the potential for cultivating proxy partnerships. While regional and international actors certainly saw it as a moment of profound threat to their security interests, meriting both direct and indirect engagement,⁴⁵ the Iraqi actors they sought to cultivate as proxies had domestic, not international interests, at the top of their agenda. As will be expanded upon further below, at such a crucial moment, Iraqi interests and concerns rose to the top, limiting Iraqi stakeholders’ attention to external interests, even to those of their strongest backers.

A final important contextual point is the way that the intense competition for control of key areas and overlapping linkages and interests between parties and forces generated what might be framed as a ‘sub-state’ proxy war. The strongest relationships of support and those that bear the greatest resemblance to proxy relationships have arisen between more and less powerful Iraqi actors, and driven by internal, sub-state competition, rather than external interests and intervention.

As they expanded into new territory, these hybrid actors tended to mobilize or co-opt local forces, in relationships that might best be analogized to proxy relationships in themselves. Badr and AAH (among other PMF forces) set up their own local affiliates or franchises across the territory they sought to influence and control, from Diyala, into Salah ad-Din and Kirkuk, and to a lesser degree in Ninewa and Anbar. This ranged from more natural bedfellows, like local Shi’a Turkmen communities in Tuz Khurmatu, Kirkuk,⁴⁶ and Tal Afar, or Shabak PMF around Mosul, to partnerships that crossed sectarian and ethnic lines—a range of Sunni tribal PMF forces in Salah ad-Din,⁴⁷ as well as some Sunni tribal leaders or forces, and other minority stakeholders in both Ninewa and Diyala.⁴⁸ It is worth noting that subordinate forces tended to identify with their particular patron, for example, as a Badr, AAH, or Saray-as-Salam affiliate, rather than these subgroups having allegiance to the PMF as a whole.⁴⁹

Similar to the larger PMF groups, Kurdish forces—the KDP, PUK, and the PKK—also sought to cultivate their own local surrogates or affiliates.⁵⁰ The KDP put local Sunni Arab tribal forces in Rabi’a and Zummar, a number of Kaldo-Assyrian forces in the Ninewa Plains, and some Yezidi forces in Sinjar on the Peshmerga payroll as special minority units.⁵¹ The PUK has had a more limited range of local partnerships, but did co-opt elements of the local police or other local political actors when it controlled parts of Kirkuk and northern Tuz Khurmatu.⁵² The PKK also recruited their own affiliated Yezidi force, which still maintains a hold in Sinjar, in competition with PMF and KDP aligned forces and actors.⁵³

The local-to-national relationships and conflict dynamics that emerged in these areas mirror many of the attributes of proxy warfare. Proxy warfare has been described as “warfare on the cheap” because it allows external actors to achieve strategic interests in areas outside of their home territory without the same costs and risks as direct intervention.⁵⁴ In a similar vein, as groups like Badr or AAH, or the KDP or PUK pushed beyond their normal operating areas and constituencies—effectively external actors to these local areas—local forces offered a low-cost means to broker influence and maintain a presence. They offered local know-how, legitimacy, and extra manpower, as well as a layer of plausible deniability that lowered the risks of intervention and made it possible for these essentially external Iraqi stakeholders to stay vested even when it was no longer politically palatable.⁵⁵ For example, at times there were formal restraints placed on non-local Hashd forces operating in places like Tuz Khurmatu, or around Mosul; however, these limits were easily circumvented because the larger Hashd forces could maintain influence and access via their local affiliates.⁵⁶

In exchange, these Iraqi and Kurdish patrons provided the smaller groups with arms, training, and salaries (salary allocations under the PMF umbrella, or direct salary support via the Peshmerga) as well as political protection and backing. In many liberated areas, which forces were allowed to take responsibility as the security force, or “hold” force, on the ground was determined through agreements between the larger national stakeholders, between Baghdad and the KRG, between the PMF and the prime minister’s office, or between the PMF and the KRG. In areas like the Ninewa Plains, in Sinjar, or in Tuz Khurmatu, which local forces or actors got to stay in control and dominate the local area depended on which national stakeholder they aligned with, and the political protection that this patron could offer.⁵⁷

While the lens of proxy warfare has traditionally not been applied at a sub-state level, between two or more internal parties, similar patterns of fragmentation and the rise of powerful non-state actors have generated increasing attention to this phenomenon in other parts of the Middle East. As the head of the International Crisis Group, Robert Malley as written, in these fragmented spaces, powerful non-state actors “operate as both proxies and independent players,” both challenging state control and making it hard to establish accountability.⁵⁸ Studies of powerful non-state or “hybrid” forces in countries across the Middle East have recognized that they may equally play the role of proxies or patrons, seeking external backing but also in some cases simultaneously running their own sub-state proxies and strategies.⁵⁹ Scholar Kim Cragin has coined the term “semi-proxy warfare” to describe such dynamics, arguing that the term “proxy war” fails to reflect the significant role of non-state or sub-state actors in driving conflict and surrogacy dynamics in places like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.⁶⁰

While these sub-state proxy ties and alignments appeared stronger than external ones, they were not entirely divorced from externally driven proxy strategies. External support from regional powers like Iran and Turkey, or from the U.S. and other Coalition forces, was also inter-mixed with these local-to-national support relationships. As noted earlier, U.S. and Coalition forces and Turkey provided direct support, training, or other support to some of the Sunni and other minority subgroups within the PMF.⁶¹ These other sources of support gave these smaller groups some degree of independence from the larger Hashd structure, and made it less likely that they would act as local proxies for the larger Shi’a PMF groups.⁶² Some of the Sunni or minority PMF groups also claimed that they were supported by Iran, although it was not always clear that this was through an independent relationship rather than something that was presumed or indirect because they received funding from Iranian-affiliated groups like Badr or AAH.⁶³

As a result of these dynamics, what emerged in many areas was a sort of layered proxy competition, with proxy or partner relationships manifesting between local forces and national patrons, between those national patron-forces and larger foreign backers, and sometimes also direct relationships between foreign patrons and very localized forces. The overlapping connections between local, national, regional, and international ties meant that local competition could quickly escalate up, with local conflicts bringing about national or regional ramifications; and vice versa—national or regional rivalries drove local conflict escalation in hotspot communities across central and northern Iraq.⁶⁴

The post-2014 situation in Iraq presented in some ways both the best- and worst-case conditions for proxy warfare. There were any number of potential proxies seeking resources and patronage. Given the history of proxy intervention in Iraq, many of these groups already had ties and linkages to external patrons. Moreover, the Iraqi state was not only too weak to prevent external intervention, but its divided and fractious constituent parts were as likely to aid and abet proxy competition as to block it.

While these elements encouraged proxy intervention, other post-2014 dynamics made such partnerships more challenging. The overlapping and often conflicting connections between local, national, and foreign stakeholders created a highly complex and unstable environment for proxy relationships. The quantity of potential proxy and patron relationships, and frequent flux between these groups and in their allegiances, made it difficult to gauge interests and affiliations. A classic dilemma, long recognized in proxy warfare literature, is the difficulty of fully knowing a proxy’s intentions and constraining or controlling a proxy’s actions.⁶⁵ The multiplicity of actors and complexity of relationships in Iraq increased the sort of information asymmetries that make this dilemma so acute. Moreover, the availability of different patrons and the zero-sum competitive environment made any partnerships that were formed more unreliable, because groups could easily switch sides and alignments at will.⁶⁶ It was a classic application of assumptions within principal-agent theory that proxies will be more difficult to control when they have multiple potential backers, because their options for defaulting or shirking their duties increase.⁶⁷ The prevalence of sub-state proxy relationships posed an additional challenge. Those closest to the ground, in particular the larger hybrid actors, were better able to manage the rapid fluctuations in relationships and interests than external actors, which tended to give their proxy maneuvers an edge on those driven by purely external actors.

All of these factors combined to produce an environment in which proxies were abundant, but difficult to fully control, particularly by external states. The subsequent sections will illustrate how such dynamics played out in U.S. and Iranian partnerships with Iraqi actors, and what the dynamics in Iraq suggest about the future of proxy warfare.