Iraq is negotiating away its militias’ guns. It is not negotiating away their impunity.
The announcement would be almost darkly comic if it weren’t so consequential.
Washington designated Fayyad a human rights abuser years ago for his role in one of the bloodiest episodes in modern Iraqi history: the killing of more than 500 unarmed protesters during the 2019 Tishreen demonstrations, with thousands more wounded and hundreds detained illegally.
The officer he installed to run the new department, Abu Muntadher al-Husseini, is accused by the same rights groups of helping carry out that violence.
Seven years later, neither man has faced a courtroom.
This is the backdrop against which Iraq’s […]