Friday, 21 August 2026

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi will submit the Popular Mobilization law to parliament after a months-long standoff, Rudaw reported on 21 August, a government spokesman saying passage will come "in the coming days". The bill arrives with the factions split over the commission it would formalise: Al-Ahad TV (AAH — official) carried both the law's approach and calls to condemn or dismiss PMF Commission chairman Faleh al-Fayyad over his failure to appear before parliament, as today's militia digest sets out, and a Sadiqoun deputy said Asaib Ahl al-Haq leader Qais al-Khazali had intervened over the arrest of a PMF officer, 964 Media reported. Baghdad meanwhile arrested two arms dealers as part of its push to bring weapons under state control, and reaffirmed to visiting Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf its ban on armed groups threatening other countries — six weeks before the 30 September handover deadline.

Ghalibaf's Baghdad trip fell short of all its objectives, sources told Asharq al-Awsat on 20 August, the same paper having reported that he brought to Baghdad an Iranian plan to conceal rather than surrender the factions' weapons. Tehran announced during the visit that banking barriers with Iraq had been removed, Iraq asked Iran for special treatment for its oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, and the trip closed in Karbala, where the speaker hailed the shared history of the two countries. No public outcome on the weapons file emerged from the visit.

In the north, the tripartite deal governing exports from the Kurdistan Region has been renewed and is spurring field restarts, Iraq Oil Report said on 20 August. The investigation into the drone attack on the office of KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani is running under the direct supervision of the Iraqi prime minister, a spokesperson told The New Region, and the Iraqi parliament speaker condemned the attack — no party has claimed it and neither Baghdad nor Erbil has named one in these accounts.

The central bank's official foreign reserves stand at $86.17 billion, down 8 percent on the previous reading, on the bank's own series, a fall recorded as Brent settled at $95.29 a barrel, 3.1 percent higher and Chinese refiners bought up Iraqi barrels as more supply left Hormuz, Bloomberg reported. The communications regulator shut Korek Telecom's Baghdad offices, and the company's chief executive called the decision "illegal" and personal, Rudaw reported.

Al-Ahad TV (AAH — official) spent a quarter of an hour on the evening of 20 August carrying both a headline that the Popular Mobilization law is nearing approval as "a new phase to consolidate institutional construction" and calls to punish the commission's own chairman. Abd al-Ghani al-Ghadhban, head of the political office of the Shams Party, was quoted saying Faleh al-Fayyad's failure to appear before parliament gives the council the right to condemn or dismiss him, and the channel's on-screen graphics went harder than its captions, accusing Fayyad of evading accountability and disregarding the blood of the martyrs. Half an hour earlier the same channel had aired analyst Abd al-Husayn al-Juraykhi saying the law would serve Prime Minister Ali al-Zaid and should seat the PMF Commission alongside the other official security forces, with praise for the Sadiqoun bloc by name. Rudaw reported separately that Zaidi will submit the PMF law to parliament after a months-long standoff.

Jurf al-Nasr ran across four factional channels in under a day with the speaker labels shifting under the same words. Al-Ahad TV posted a one-line statement that land contracts there have not been renewed since 2003 and that most contract holders are accused of terrorism, attributing it to a speaker called Turki; sixteen minutes later Watan TV (Badr Organization — affiliated) ran the sentence word for word and attributed it to the governor of Babil instead. By Friday morning iNEWS (KSS — affiliated) quoted Babil Governor Ali Turki saying the area would be offered for investment as tourist and residential cities, with entry allowed to everyone except Khamis al-Khanjar; six minutes later Al-Ahad TV carried only "a decisive government decision to definitively end its complex file", naming neither the governor nor the exclusion.

The night before, Al-Ahad TV had run an hour-long Jurf al-Nasr block that went considerably further. It carried the Babil governor's exclusion of al-Khanjar alongside Turki saying the area "is not Sunni", that security vetting had recorded 5,000 terrorists from Jurf al-Nasr, and that the people of al-Saeedat remain displaced — with a banner adding that their return was prevented because of the security danger. In a separate studio segment the same speaker put the toll among forces in Jarf al-Nasr after the liberation at 250 killed and 600 wounded, while the channel's own on-screen banner assigned those casualties to the security forces rather than the Hashd. Nothing corroborates the figures, and neither the channel nor anyone else has said who imposes the entry rule on al-Khanjar.

On the security file, two channels from different factions announced the same Samarra deployment within hours. Al-Ghadeer TV (Badr Organization — official) reported late on 20 August that PMF security had reinforced its posture on the city's entrances and exits for the anniversary of Imam al-Askari's death, publishing a night image of an armed man beside an armoured vehicle marked "General Directorate of Security and Discipline". Al-Nujaba TV (Nujaba — official) posted the same reinforcement early on 21 August with its own night image of a "Special Forces" vehicle numbered 153. Neither caption names a threat, an incident or a perpetrator.

Al-Janoub TV (Harakat al-Jihad wal-Bina — official) turned overnight to fuel and pay. It broadcast live from Baghdad showing cars cutting out one after another for want of petrol with citizens pushing them, and just under an hour later carried a Basra item on holders of 13,000 contract positions demanding faster payment of their dues. Earlier, shortly after midnight, the channel had aired an unnamed driver saying private station owners had agreed among themselves over the 1,000-litre allocation and closed all their stations, followed by a post asking where a blessed country's blessings are with no food basket, oil, gas or electricity. The channel named no ministry and issued no demand in the movement's name, and there has been no coverage of the closures beyond it.

Al-Ahad TV also posted three segments in forty seconds from its programme Nisf Da'ira with Agriculture Minister Abdul Rahim al-Shammari: influential investors converting Baghdad farmland to residential use, junior ministry employees caught arranging contracts and sales, and farmers in the disputed areas barred from cultivating their land. The Kurdistan Democratic Party appears only in the channel's own framing question about pressure on Nineveh farmers; the minister's quoted answer names the disputed areas and no responsible party. On the same evening the channel published the Prime Minister's Office order of 19 August assigning Jawad Hamid al-Jubouri as technical deputy minister of environment, reproducing the signed document; no other channel carried the appointment and no sponsor was named.