Baghdad restates its June 2027 disarmament deadline a week after the last Americans left
Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s office says weapons will be restricted to state control by 30 June 2027. The claim that five militias have already agreed rests on the prime minister’s own account.
On 4 October, a spokesperson for Zaidi said Baghdad’s goal remains restricting weapons to state control by a 30 June 2027 deadline, according to FDD’s Long War Journal, a Washington outlet that advocates openly on this file and should be read as such. The same account says Shafaq News and Kurdistan24 both reported on 6 October that Zaidi had cited a figure of five militias agreeing to place their arms under state control, and that The New Arab named them as Saraya al-Salam, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Imam Ali and Ansar Allah al-Awfiya. Three outlets reporting the same number is not three confirmations: the number originates with the prime minister, and none of the accounts retrieved attaches a verification mechanism to the phrase “under state control”.
The legislative half of the file is further along and no clearer. The Council of Ministers voted in its 21st session on 29 September to approve a draft law governing the Popular Mobilisation Forces and referred it to parliament, Shafaq News reported. Shafaq, citing unnamed informed sources, said contentious provisions were stripped before referral, including ones those sources described as facing a “US veto” — their characterisation, not a documented American act. The National reported the same day that the bill was expected to raise the PMF to parity with the rest of the armed forces, and that Washington regards it as entrenching Iranian influence. No text has been published. A previous PMF bill was approved by cabinet on 25 February 2025 and referred to parliament, where it died.
Assessment: Read the calendar rather than the rhetoric. The US mission ended on 30 September; the disarmament deadline falls nine months later. Baghdad has given itself a timetable to do the thing the foreign presence was said to obstruct, at the precise moment the only coercive instrument on the ground has gone home. Two things to distrust: a cabinet referral is not passage, as February 2025 demonstrated, and the figure of five is a political claim by a prime minister whose Coordination Framework backers include parties with militia ties. The National Interest reports a phased plan whose first stage, running to 1 January, commits factions only to silence. If that is the actual content, the deadline is a press line with a date attached.