Iraqi Foreign Minister Huad Hussein said efforts to pass a new legislation in Parliament on August 18 came at the wrong time, while at the same time highlighting the inability of efforts to regulate the status of popular mobilisation units (PMUs) and at the same time, it cannot disarm resistance groups, including the PMUs, by the military.
“The timing of introducing popular mobilizing force laws was wrong, especially in light of the tense regional and international circumstances, he was the only minister to express this in the Cabinet before the draft law was sent to Parliament,” Hussein said in an interview on Iraqi television.
The new law will update existing laws regulating the PMU, turn it into a direct and completely independent security body for the Prime Minister, and bypass the Ministry of Defense and the Home Affairs, the Cradle reported.
The PMU, founded in 2014, recruits volunteers to fight ISIS, which took over Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and is loyal to Iraq’s Kurdish leader Masuud Barzani, with the secret support of the US and Peshmerga forces.
Deputy Prime Minister Hussein compared the issue of Iraq’s PMU with Lebanon’s Hezbollah issue. The US is also pressureing the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, which defended the country from Israeli invasion last year.
“Lebanon’s Hezbollah weapons cannot be disarmed except by dialogue. Iraqis cannot force disarm the popular mobilization force. Centralising decision-making is a Syrian problem, and decentralization may be the solution.”