Baghdad Governorate, also known as the Baghdad Province, is the capital governorate of Iraq. It includes the capital Baghdad as well as the surrounding metropolitan area. The governorate is one of two small provinces of all 19 in Iraq into which the country divides entirely, yet by a margin of almost three-to-one, the most populous.
Sadr City, formerly known as Al-Thawra and Saddam City, is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. It was built in 1959 by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim and later unofficially renamed Sadr City after Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr.
The Islamic Dawa Party, also known as the Islamic Call Party, is a Shia Islamist political party in Iraq. Dawa and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council are two of the main parties in the religious-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which won a plurality of seats in both the provisional January 2005 Iraqi election and the longer-term December 2005 election. The party is led by Haider al-Abadi, who was the Prime Minister of Iraq from 8 September 2014 to 25 October 2018. The party backed the Iranian Revolution and also Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iran–Iraq War and the group still receives financial support from Tehran despite ideological differences with the Islamic Republic. As of 2019, after two decades of political prominence and success, it is suffering from internal divisions and on danger of losing its "political relevance".
Ayatollah al-Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Muhsin al-Hakim at-Tabataba'i, also known as Shaheed al-Mehraab, was a senior Iraqi Shia Islamic Scholar and the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Al-Hakim spent more than 20 years in exile in Iran and returned to Iraq on 12 May 2003. Al-Hakim was a contemporary of Ayatollah Khomeini, and The Guardian compared the two in terms of their times in exile and their support in their respective homelands. After his return to Iraq, al-Hakim's life was in danger because of his work to encourage Shiite resistance to Saddam Hussein and from a rivalry with Muqtada al-Sadr, the son of the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who had himself been assassinated in Najaf in 1999. Al-Hakim was assassinated in a bomb attack in Najaf in 2003 when aged 63 years old. At least 75 others in the vicinity also died in the bombing.
The Peace Companies are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.
The Badr Organization, previously known as the Badr Brigades or Badr Corps, is an Iraqi Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary organization headed by Hadi Al-Amiri. The Badr Brigade was the Iran-officered military wing of the Iran-based Shia Islamic party, Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), formed in 1982. The Badr Brigade was created by Iranian intelligence and Shia cleric Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim with the aim of fighting Saddam Hussein's regime during the Iran–Iraq War. Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq most of Badr's fighters have entered the new Iraqi army and police force. Politically, Badr Brigade and SCIRI were considered to be one party since 2003, but have now unofficially separated with the Badr Organization now an official Iraqi political party. Badr Brigade forces, and their Iranian commanders, have come to prominence in 2014 fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. It is a part of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
The Sadrist Movement is an Iraqi Shi'a Islamic national movement and political party, led by Muqtada al-Sadr.
The Islamic Dawa Party – Iraq Organisation is a political party in Iraq which is a component of the United Iraqi Alliance. It split from the Islamic Dawa Party during the regime of Saddam Hussein when most of the leaders of Dawa were in exile. It was allocated 12 seats by the Alliance after the elections in December 2005. It is led by Hashim Al-Mosawy, who is its Secretary-General. The head of the parliamentary bloc of the party is Kasim Muhammad Taqi al-Sahlani.
Special Groups (SGs) is a designation given by the United States military to the cell-based Shi'a paramilitary organizations operating within Iraq, backed by Iran. According to the United States these groups are funded, trained, and armed by the Iranian Quds Force, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the United States Department of Defense, 603 American troops in total were confirmed to have been killed by IRGC-backed Shia militias during the Iraq War.
The Promised Day Brigade, originally called the Muqawimun, was a Shi'a organization and was an insurgent group operating in Iraq during the war. In 2010, it was one of the largest and most powerful of what the US military call "Special Groups" in Iraq.
Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as the Khazali Network, is a radical Iraqi Shi'a political party and paramilitary group active in the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War. During the Iraq War it was known as Iraq's largest "Special Group", and was since 2016 part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of Shi’ite militias, cooperating with the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS, while some of PMF's membergroups were influenced also by Iran.
The Popular Mobilization Forces, also known as the People's Mobilization Committee (PMC) and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of approximately 67 different armed factions, with around 204,000 fighters that are mostly Shia Muslim groups, but also include Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi groups. The Popular Mobilization Units as a group was formed in 2014 and have fought in nearly every major battle against ISIL. It has been called the new Iraqi Republican Guard after it was fully reorganized in early 2018 by its then–Commander in Chief Haider al-Abadi, Prime Minister of Iraq from 2014 to 2018, who issued "regulations to adapt the situation of the Popular Mobilization fighters".
Ahmed Jassim Al Asadi is an Iraqi politician who currently serves as a Member of Parliament for Baghdad, and is a former official spokesman for Popular Mobilization Forces. He is spokesman of the Fatah Alliance and Secretary General of the "Islamic Movement" in Iraq.. Ahmed Al-Asadi was the victim of an extortion campaign carried out by Australian and Canadian citizens. Al-Asadi is a dual Australian and Iraqi national.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 12 May 2018. The elections decided the 329 members of the Council of Representatives, the country's unicameral legislature, who in turn will elect the Iraqi president and prime minister. The Iraqi parliament ordered a manual recount of the results on 6 June 2018. On 10 June 2018, a storage site in Baghdad housing roughly half of the ballots from the May parliamentary election caught fire.
The Fatah Alliance, also sometimes translated as the Conquest Alliance, is a political coalition in Iraq formed to contest the 2018 general election. The main components are groups involved in the Popular Mobilization Forces which is mainly a state-sponsored umbrella organization made up of Iraqi Shiite Muslims who fought from 2014 to 2017 alongside the Iraqi Army to defeat ISIL. It is led by Hadi Al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization.
Saraya al-Jihad or as the Popular Mobilization Forces' 17th Brigade is an Iraqi Shia group and the armed wing of the Jihad and Development Movement, operating in Iraq and Syria under the command of the Popular Mobilization Forces. It has been closely intertwined with Liwa al-Muntazar.
The Babylon Movement is a Chaldean Catholic political party situated in Iraq. Founded in 2014, it is the political wing of the Babylon Brigades, a Christian militia that was formed as part of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces. Rayan al-Kildani heads the party. The party has close ties to the Badr Organization and IRGC. Babylon Movement has been accused of illegal land seizures in the Nineveh Governorate and corruption.
Jaysh al-Mu'ammal, also known as Liwa al-Mu'ammal or as the Popular Mobilization Forces' 99th Brigade, is a Shia Islamist Iraqi private militia that is led by Sa'ad Sawar and has fought in the Syrian Civil War and Iraqi Civil War. Founded as a splinter faction of the Sadrist Movement, Jaysh al-Mu'ammal is supported by Iran and former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The Islamic State insurgency in Iraq is an ongoing low-intensity insurgency that began in 2017 after the Islamic State (ISIS) lost its territorial control in the War in Iraq, during which ISIS and allied White Flags fought the Iraqi military and allied paramilitary forces.
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