On 26 June, Faleh al-Fayyad, the chairman of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, inaugurated a new “Department of Human Rights” within the organization he leads. 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 30 September disarmament deadline is unfolding, and it is the part of the story that keeps getting lost.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has made “restricting weapons to the state” the defining project of his young government, with strong backing from Washington and a fresh $60 billion package of American energy and business deals to sweeten the deal. Some militias have moved to comply. Others, like Kataib Hezbollah, have dismissed the deadline on social media as “empty bravado.”

Analysts at Chatham House call full disarmament “an impossible task,” given how deeply the factions are embedded in Iraq’s security and economic institutions. All of that is real, and all of it matters.

Analysts at Chatham House call full disarmament “an impossible task,” given how deeply the factions are embedded in Iraq’s security and economic institutions. All of........

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