Vice President of the Popular Mobilization Forces

The position of Vice President of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) did not disappear from circulation because the need for it ceased to exist, but because invoking it has become an embarrassment.

This embarrassment is neither administrative nor organizational; it is eminently political and ethical. It leads directly to the name of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, to an assassination that occurred on Iraqi soil, and to a political class that consciously decided to turn its back on its obligations rather than confront them.

This position was not a bureaucratic detail or an honorary title. It was a complex role that combined the duties of Chief of Staff, supreme field commander, and the political and military management of the conflict during Iraq's most dangerous modern moment. When army units collapsed, cities fell in succession, and terrorism advanced across more than half of the country’s geography, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was not a "symbolic figurehead." He was the brain and the axis of the war: planning, coordinating, providing, and holding the threads of decision-making from the battlefield to the Parliament and the Government. This weight is what linked the position to his person—not because institutions are built on individuals, but because the state itself was absent, and the vacuum was filled by the one who possessed the competence and the will.

It is true that this position was exceptional, and perhaps indeed, no one was—or is—able to fill it with that same specificity and complex blend of military expertise, political acumen, and regional reach. But this fact, however valid, does not justify what happened later. The absence of a successor does not explain the erasure of the position itself. We are not talking about a technical inability here, but a conscious political decision to cancel the post from the official memory because its permanence opens a file that many do not wish to approach. More dangerously, this erasure has been accompanied by a deliberate re-engineering of rhetoric. A significant number of politicians prefer to use the expression "Leaders of Victory" instead of clearly mentioning names and titles. This linguistic choice is neither innocent nor spontaneous; it is a vague description, carrying less legal and political cost. It allows for the achievement to be generalized and diluted, avoiding the explicit recognition that an official Iraqi figure of the stature of the Vice President of the PMF was targeted in a direct American assassination on Iraqi soil.

From here, the systematic mitigation of responsibility begins. Since day one, the idea has been promoted that the target was not Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, but General Qasem Soleimani. This is a deliberate disregard for leaks and statements issued from within the U.S. administration itself—most notably the U.S. President’s description of the operation as "two for the price of one." Denying that al-Muhandis was a target is not an error in judgment, but an intentional attempt to transform the crime from an assault on Iraqi sovereignty into an ambiguous regional file, the consequences of which are cast beyond the borders.

In this manner, al-Muhandis's name is forcibly merged with Soleimani's and presented as if he were an escort or a secondary detail, rather than an official Iraqi leader. The result is clear: an evasion of the duty to pursue legal and political accountability for the assassination of an Iraqi citizen and military commander, and the avoidance of any serious confrontation with the United States—which does not hide its disdain for the political class in Baghdad.

Even the Iraqi judicial decision to issue an arrest warrant for Donald Trump was no exception to this path. It was issued to be recorded, not executed, and quickly became ink on paper amidst continued political meetings. The height of political absurdity was reached when the Iraqi Prime Minister nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here, silence is no longer neutrality; it becomes actual participation in emptying justice of its substance.

The conclusion requires no linguistic softening:

The position of Vice President of the PMF was not sidelined simply because its holder is irreplaceable, but because sidelining the position serves a clear objective: burying questions of sovereignty, assassination, and political responsibility.

The ruling class chose to manage memory instead of confronting the truth, preferring safety with foreign powers over acknowledging a crime within its own borders.

This is not a fleeting shortcoming, but a failure that will remain recorded in the political and ethical ledger of the Iraqi state.