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CONCEPT – SHIA MILITIAS IN WEST ASIA
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- Shia Crescent: The Shia Crescent is the notionally crescent-shaped region of the Middle East where the majority population is Shia or a strong Shia minority exists. These areas are under Iranian control, as Iran has sought to unite all Shia Muslims under one banner.
- Areas included: The crescent includes Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Yemen, and western Afghanistan.
- How many: For decades, Shia armed groups have altered the sociopolitical and military landscape of the Middle East. As of 2019, more than a hundred different Shia groups and subgroups operate in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.
- Pro-government: Shia militia activities are often called as part of “pro-government forces", even when these groups take on dominant roles in a given conflict and pursue goals that differ from those of government forces.
- Iran the creator: The Islamic Republic of Iran is assumed to be the principal creator and backer of Shia militias throughout the Middle East. Iran is competing with its neighbors, asserting an arc of influence and instability while vying for regional hegemony, using state-sponsored terrorist activities, a growing network of proxies, and its missile program to achieve its objectives. But not every Shia armed group is a proxy of Tehran.
- PMF comes into being, 2014: The Iraqi government in 2014 created the al-Hashd al-Shabi (the Popular Mobilization Forces), an umbrella group of mostly Shia militias dominated by Iranian-backed groups. Some of the powerful PMF elements are also fighting in Syria, while many have established significant political power within the Iraqi government. Since the 2014 collapse of the Iraqi army in the North of Iraq against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the fatwa by the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling for jihad or hashad shaabi ("popular mobilization") against ISIL, militias have become even more prominent in Iraq.
- List of groups:
- - Iraqi PMF groups (whether official or claimed)
- - Lebanese Hezbollah
- - Syrian Shia groups organized on the Hezbollah model
- - Shia militias that claim alignment with the Syrian army
- - Muqtada al-Sadr’s groups Saraya al-Salam and Liwa al-Youm al-Mawud
- - Iraqi and Syrian Shia tribal militias
- - Groups that identify as part of a larger camp under the control of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
- - Newly announced Shia militias
- - Militias with majority Ismaili (or Sevener Shia) membership, and
- - Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and its subunits, including the Pakistani Shia group Liwa Zainabiyoun and the Afghan Shia group Liwa Fatemiyoun.
- Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict: It is also called the Iran–Saudi Arabia Cold War, and is an ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and surrounding regions between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The two countries are engaged in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. The rivalry extends to disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Morocco, as well as broader competition in North and East Africa, parts of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.
- The beginning: The proxy conflict can be traced back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the US-backed monarchic Imperial State of Iran became an Islamic republic. The revolutionaries called for the overthrow of monarchies and secular governments to be replaced with Islamic republics, much to the alarm of Iran's smaller Sunni-run Arab neighbors Saudi Arabia, Ba'athist Iraq, Kuwait, and the other Persian Gulf states, most of whom were monarchies and all of whom had sizable Shia populations. Islamist insurgents rose in Saudi Arabia in 1979, Egypt and Bahrain in 1981, Syria in 1982, and Lebanon in 1983. Prior to the Iranian Revolution, the two countries constituted the Nixon Doctrine's "twin pillar" policy in the Middle East.
- Killing of Qassem Soleimani: The Qods group of the IRGC of Iran was led by General Soleimani, who gave support to many Shia-militia groups across the region. An American drone-strike killed him in January 2020, leading to fears of reprisals by Iran.
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