The Militias of Baghdad
Down a dusty backstreet in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karada in November, I met Sheikh Raad al-Khafaji, a former Iraqi Army officer specializing in artillery and a veteran fighter from the days of the Iran-Iraq War. He is head of the Al-Khafaji tribe and a commander in the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, one of the Shiite militias at the forefront of the fight against ISIS, or the Islamic State, in Iraq. After the fall of Mosul this summer, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on Iraqi “citizens to defend the country, its ...
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