The Washington Institute:

By Sary Mumayiz and Michael Knights

Since the fall of the Assad regime, Baghdad has provided shelter and material support to members of two U.S.-designated Afghan and Pakistani groups run by the Iranian military.

When the Assad regime imploded in December, one of many unanswered questions was what would happen to the large number of Afghan and Pakistani Shia fighters in Syria who are controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and brigaded under the militias Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainabiyoun. Both militias are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations; Zainabiyoun is also banned in Pakistan, where it recruits its fighters.

In December, some Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun personnel entered Iraq via al-Qaim. This area is controlled by Qasim Muslih, the commander of Liwa al-Tafuf, the 13th Brigade of the Iraqi government-funded Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). As the head of PMF units based in Anbar province, Muslih takes orders from the Jazira Operations Command, run by the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Kataib Hezbollah (KH). Initially, the PMF and KH commands hosted these Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun fighters inside complexes in al-Qaim that have historically been used as transshipment hubs for Iranian ballistic missiles and other materiel en route to Syria and Lebanon.

Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun personnel are also reportedly present at Camp Ashraf (aka the Martyr Abu Munthadher al-Muhammadawi Camp) in Diyala province. Formally under the Iraqi government's control, this PMF base is actually run by the Iran-formed Badr Organization and was formerly used by Saddam Hussein to house Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Israel reportedly bombed Ashraf in 2019 due to the presence of Iranian missile and drone systems there. 

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