GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

Reflections on the Life and Death of an Iraqi Militant

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Charles Glass
Board of Contributors

Jan 20, 2020 | 09:45 GMT

A picture taken on Jan. 11, 2020, shows portraits of Iraq's slain Popular Mobilization Unit deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the late founder of Kataib Hezbollah, on the southern exit of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Portraits of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis line a street in Beirut on Jan. 11, 2020. As much as the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. missile strike inflamed passions in Iran, the killing of al-Muhandis in the same operation had similar effects in Iraq, where he was a widely known and respected militia leader.

(JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images)

Highlights

  • Iraqi militant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed Jan. 3 in the same U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
  • Iran trained al-Muhandis and other dissident Iraqi Shiites to fight against Saddam Hussein. They would go on to attack U.S. targets in the Middle East before joining an implicit U.S.-Iranian alliance against the Islamic State.
  • The fight against the Islamic State and the Iran nuclear deal offered Washington and Tehran a chance to ease tensions between them. But once again, they would fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and the killings of Soleimani and al-Muhandis further dim the prospect of ending their feud.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis fought Saddam Hussein, engineered attacks on Western embassies and took on the Islamic State. His death in the same strike that killed Iran's Qassem Soleimani increased local hostility to the U.S. presence in Iraq....

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