In March 2015 Al
Monitor published an interview with Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi the head of Hezbollah
al-Nujaba. Kaabi has a long history in Iraq with Shiite political parties and
armed groups. He was a student of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr in the
1990s, a military commander with Moqtada al-Sadr after 2003, then a leader
within Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, before creating his own spin off group Hezbollah
al-Nujaba that went to fight in Syria and is now engaged in Iraq. Today, Kaabi
and his organization are one of many within the Hashd al-Shaabi, which are
close to Iran and taking part in its rivalry with the United States for
influence after the war is over.
Video featuring the clerical and military credentials of Sheikh Kaabi
In Sheikh Akram Al-Kaabi’s interview with Al Monitor he
expressed his close ties to Iran and his opposition to the United States’
involvement in Iraq. Kaabi said that his group Hezbollah al-Nujaba was assisted
by Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah advisers as well as receiving weapons from
Tehran. He went on to say that he believed in vilyat al-faqih and was following
the teachings of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He
then condemned the United States, blaming it for Iraq’s problems from the 2003
invasion up to the present day. He repeated an often heard claim amongst Iraqis
today that the Americans were secretly supporting the Islamic State by dropping
it weapons and that its air strikes were useless. He blamed Baghdad for letting
them interfere in the war, and threated to attack U.S. aircraft. He repeated
that claim later on after Washington began air strikes on Tikrit on March 25. Kaabi’s
statements reflect many themes that other pro-Iranian armed groups have talked
about before. Like Badr Organization head Hadi
Ameri, many of these groups have publicly praised Tehran for all of the
assistance it has provided in the fight against IS, while attacking America’s
role. Since Hezbollah al-Nujaba is a spinoff of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq (AAH) they
both claim to be the true heirs of Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr’s movement, while
also professing their adherence to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s form of rule
of the jurisprudent. That is a difficult balance since one of Sadr’s main
arguments was that Iraq’s Arabs and Najaf should be the leading the Shiite
religious establishment, not Iranians or Qom. That contradiction is at the
heart of Kaabi’s history.
Kaabi got involved in politics as a student of Ayatollah
Sadiq al-Sadr, which took him to the son Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement, then Asaib
Ahl Al-Haq and finally his own brand, which brought Kaabi closer to Tehran in
the process. In the 1990s, Kaabi was enrolled
in religious classes in Najaf under Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr. He was classmates
with Moqtada al-Sadr and Qais Khazali both of which would be influential in Kaabi’s
future. At the end of that decade Saddam Hussein had the ayatollah killed, and
Kaabi was probably part of Sadr’s core students that tried to maintain his
movement covertly in the following years. After the 2003 invasion, Moqtada Sadr
re-opened
his father’s office in Najaf and Kaabi was one of his top deputies. He would
eventually became the top
commander of the Mahdi Army, and participated
in the April and August 2004 battles for Najaf against the Americans. During
those confrontations, Sadr was receiving
advice from Iran and its Revolutionary Guards, but afterward, Tehran
offered its full support. Sadr did not want to be open about these ties so it
was agreed to create Asaib Ahl Al-Haq (AAH), which would be run by Sadr’s top
lieutenant Qais Khazali and act as if it was an independent group, but would
actually still remain an arm of the Sadrists. When the Americans arrested Khazali
in March 2007 Kaabi took over the organization. The next year Tehran became
tired of working with Sadr who it considered too difficult and encouraged AAH
to split from his movement. It did, and Kaabi would become one of its main
leaders. As a way to try to establish its legitimacy AAH would claim that it
was the true inheritor of Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr’s legacy. Kaabi makes the
same types of statements since he was a student of the elder Sadr. Given the
fact that both AAH and Hezbollah al-Nujaba are funded, armed, and trained by
Iran and now call for vilyat al-faqih it’s clear that they have moved away from
Sadiq al-Sadr and are now firmly in Tehran’s camp.
In 2013 Hezbollah al-Nujaba emerged
as a new armed faction doing battle in Syria. According to Kaabi he retired
from AAH in 2011 after the United States withdrew its forces from Iraq, and
went back to his religious studies. He claimed that the war in Syria brought
him back, and that he created Hezbollah al-Nujaba to fight there. Like other
Iraqi groups it said that it was defending
the Sayid Zainab shrine in the Damascus suburbs. By Kaabi’s own admission
though his fighters are operating throughout the country in places like Aleppo.
He said they were acting as shock troops against the rebels in cooperation with
the Syrian army and the National Defense Force also known as the Shabiha. Hezbollah
al-Nujaba also has ties with other militias operating in Syria including Liwa
Ammar Ibn Yasir, Liwa al-Hamad
and Liwa al-Imam al-Hasan al-Mojtaba. It’s been speculated that these are
all offshoots of Kaabi’s group rather than independent entities. Likewise,
Hezbollah al-Nujaba is still believed to be connected to Asaib Ahl al-Haq
rather than being a separate organization. This would be similar to how AAH was
originally created to look like a new group, but was still actually part of the
Sadrists when it was originally formed. Likewise Hezbollah al-Nujaba’s
involvement in Syria came after Iran put out the call for assistance to defend
the Assad government, which was eventually answered by most of the Iraqi
militias with ties to Tehran.
Akram al-Kaabi represents how Iran has spread its influence
within Iraq’s Shiite community since 2003 and is now attempting to use those
allies to gain the upper hand in the country. Kaabi grew up under the tutelage
of Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr who was an Iraqi nationalist, and was opposed to
Iranian influence. When the U.S. invaded however some Iraqis were open to
Iranian assistance to fight the occupation. That’s what led Kaabi under first
Moqtada al-Sadr and then Qais Khazali towards Tehran as a friendly patron.
Today, Kaabi is fighting in both Syria and Iraq for not only religious and
nationalist purposes, but in support of Iran as well. The Iranians want to
parlay their aid to Baghdad in the war against the Islamic State into becoming
the dominant foreign power in the country. Part of that plan involves
supporting militias like Hezbollah al-Nujaba and Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, and turning
them into major military forces in the country. In turn this has garnered them
more widespread support than they had before, and that political capital will
be exploited in the future. This closely follows Iran’s strategy
in Syria where it created irregular forces that eventually surpassed the
regular army in defending the government. Its main rival in this endeavor is
the United States, which is attempting to re-engage with Baghdad after putting
the country in the rear view mirror in 2012. That’s the reason why Kaabi and
others friendly to Iran routinely denigrate and threaten the American and
Coalition air strikes. Tehran has played the Iraq crisis masterfully so far, and
outplayed the U.S., which is criticized by many Iraqis with no connections to
Iran for taking so long to join the war. Whether Iran is able to maintain this
effort or over play its hand will be one of the major stories to follow in the
coming months and years. Tracking groups like Hezbollah al-Nujaba will give an
insight into how this all plays out.
SOURCES
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