![\"Mourners](\"https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/56093217_401.jpg\" "\\"Mourners")
<\/a><\/p>\nMourners around the car carrying assassinated Iraqi paramilitary chief, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. His death left a power vacuum among Iraq’s PMF.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Militias avoiding public criticism<\/h2>\n
“The method is to create fake groups, claim attacks using these group identities\u00a0and thus mask [established militias’] role in the attacks,” writes Michael Knights in a report for the Combating Terrorism Center at US military academy\u00a0West Point, which advises government departments and other institutions.<\/p>\n
It means that the established loyalist factions can remain part of Iraq’s security forces and avoid public criticism, he argues, and since early 2020 onwards, numbers of the new groups have “skyrocketed.”<\/p>\n
Iraqi researcher Jiyad isn’t sure the new groups are simply fronts for older ones. “My instinct is that they are operationally independent from PMF groups,” he says. This makes them harder to track. “There is concern that these groups are more reckless. There’s much less oversight and that’s a worrying situation.”<\/p>\n
On January 3, this is where the danger lies, Jiyad confirms. “It comes from these new groups who are not following policy \u2014 so to speak \u2014 from Iran,” he told DW.<\/p>\n
US Embassy demonstrations likely<\/h2>\n
“The situation in Iraq is precarious for many reasons,” concludes Lahib Higel, senior Iraq analyst at the policy institute Crisis Group, noting the deteriorating economic situation and ongoing anti-government protests as destabilizing factors.<\/p>\n
She thinks locals are right to be worried about January 3. “Nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen but you can assume that there will be a demonstration outside the US Embassy,” Higel told DW. “I think it will be controlled.” But, she adds, it really depends who turns up and whether they make any “mistakes”.<\/p>\n
Kamal al-Ayash contributed to this report\u00a0from Iraq.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DW \u2014 Iraqis fear a flare-up in sectarian tensions after Iran vowed revenge for killing military leader Qassem Soleimani in January. But some fear that factions within the Iraqi security forces could also threaten stability. January 3 marks the first anniversary of the death of senior Iranian military leader\u00a0Qassem\u00a0Soleimani. The major general was killed\u00a0in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91554,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91551\/revisions\/91554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Iraq-Protester-300x200.jpg\")
DW \u2014 Iraqis fear a flare-up in sectarian tensions after Iran vowed revenge for killing military leader Qassem Soleimani in January. But some fear that factions within the Iraqi security forces could also threaten stability.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/51898698_302.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/div>\n![\"View](\"https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/52396667_401.jpg\" "\\"View")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/56093314_401.jpg\" "\\"A")
<\/a><\/p>\n