Sovereignty Support Movement Sovereignty for West Asia
News from The Cradle, May 24, 2026
The Nujaba Movement in Iraq is serving as an obstacle to new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s pledge to impose a state monopoly over weapons in the country, Asharq al-Awsat reported on 23 May.
“The resistance’s weapons are not open to compromise,” stated the Deputy head of the Nujaba movement’s executive council, Hussein al-Saeedi, during a tribal gathering in Basra.
“Stripping the factions of their weapons will leave society exposed to the ongoing threats,” he declared.
Saeedi also described proposals to merge the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) with the federal police and other forces as an “American plot.”
He also argued that the PMU, Federal Police, and Rapid Response Forces derived their strength from remaining independent of what he called “American dominance,” noting that efforts to dissolve the PMF’s ideological identity were “completely rejected.”
The Nujaba Movement was founded in 2013 by Akram al-Kaabi after splitting from another powerful Iran-aligned Shia armed group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
Nujaba operates under the umbrella of the PMU, which was founded in 2014 to protect the country from ISIS and incorporated into the Iraqi state.
Nujaba was designated a terrorist organization by the US government in 2019. The group holds no parliamentary seats and is not formally part of the Coalition Framework (CF), the largest Shia political bloc in parliament.
Content from twitter post with many trackers.
Nujaba Movement | Islamic Resistance in Iraq
“Hadeed 110 in the field.” pic.twitter.com/IySjiBQWEi— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) March 15, 2026
The CF recently chose Ali al-Zaidi as the country’s new prime minister. Under pressure from Washington, he issued a statement saying that disarming Shia armed factions of the PMU, including Nujaba, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and Kataib Hezbollah, would be part of his official platform.
Spokesperson for the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces Sabah al-Numan reiterated the Prime Minister’s commitment to disarming the factions, saying the decision “is not a mere political slogan, but a security strategy that must be implemented.”
Numan’s comments came after reports that drones launched from Iraq had targeted Saudi Arabia and the UAE earlier this week, as part of the broader war between Iran on the one hand, and the US, Israel, and their Gulf allies on the other.
The UAE said that six drones launched from Iraq had targeted the Emirates, including one that caused a fire at a nuclear power plant.
Iraqi Armed Forces Spokesman Numan said Baghdad was committed to investigating the attacks in cooperation with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. “Any party found responsible for the attacks will face judicial and military measures,” he vowed, adding that the attacks were a “threat to Iraq’s national security and flagrant violation of its sovereignty.”
Drones have also attacked targets in the Kurdistan region of Iraq amid the war between the US and Iran. The Kurdish region is widely viewed as a base for not only US forces to project power in the region, but Israeli intelligence as well.
Nujaba Movement member Mahdi Al-Kaabi: Baghdad is fully aware of the presence of the “Zionist entity” in Kurdistan.#Kurdistan #Iraq #Iraq_News pic.twitter.com/XVPGMzXiti— Alahad TV-EN (@ahad_en) March 26, 2025
Numan’s warning came in the wake of a rare visit to Iraq earlier this week by former US General David Petraeus, who led US forces occupying Iraq.
After his five-day visit to Baghdad, Petraeus stated that senior Iraqi officials he met “recognized the importance of ensuring that the Iraqi Security Services have a monopoly on the use of force in Iraq.” He added that he left Iraq “encouraged by what I heard, while also realistic about the dynamics with Iran.”
Petraeus worked closely with Iran-aligned armed groups following the 2003 US invasion, including the Badr Organization, which dominated Iraq’s Ministry of Interior. So-called ‘death squads’ established by Petraeus within the ministry’s police forces played a key role in the sectarian war that erupted between the Sunni and Shia communities following the rise of Al-Qaeda.
Under Petraeus’ guidance, the Pentagon lost track of 190,000 Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, which likely fell into the hands of the Al-Qaeda-led insurgency fighting US forces and targeting Shia civilians with suicide bombings.
Petraeus later oversaw CIA efforts to covertly arm Al-Qaeda in Syria to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad starting in 2011. The effort, known as Operation Timber Sycamore, was ultimately successful, installing a former Al-Qaeda leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Sharaa), as the leader of the country in December 2024.
