Iraq’s cabinet sent a PMF bill to parliament as the American mission wound down

On Tuesday 29 September, in its 21st regular session, Iraq’s Council of Ministers approved a draft law governing the Popular Mobilisation Forces and referred it to parliament for a vote, as reported by Shafaq News and, the following day, by The National. The distinction matters more than the headline: what has occurred is a cabinet referral. No parliamentary vote has taken place, and it could not be established whether the bill has had a first reading. Nor is it established that the referred text is the same one analysed by the US Defense Department-affiliated NESA Center in November 2025, which described a PMF bill designed to “grant the PMF greater autonomy as a military and security institution” while enhancing members' benefits. Until the referred draft is published, what the law would do is an open question.

The timing is the argument. The National placed the referral “as US forces concluded their mission in the country” — a formulation this desk has not been able to pin to a date or an instrument. What is documented is the sequence earlier in the year: Iraq’s Ministry of Defence announced on Saturday 17 January that US forces had left Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar and the Iraqi army had taken full control, though CENTCOM, cited by Fox News, dated completion to Friday 16 January. On 18 January the Iraqi government said American forces had completed a “full withdrawal” from facilities in federal territory — wording that excludes the Kurdistan Region, where US troops remain. Washington’s position, per the US-funded Alhurra, is that many PMF factions have diverged from the anti-Islamic State mission they were created for in 2014; US sanctions date from 2019 over the Tishreen crackdown.

Assessment: Read the referral as a bid to fix the PMF’s legal status while the party best placed to object is packing. A cabinet referral is cheap and reversible; a parliamentary vote is neither, which is why the bill may sit. Distrust any account — in either direction — that calls this a law passed, and distrust the clean story that the Americans have gone: “federal territory” is a carefully drawn boundary, and Harir is outside it. Two things would change the picture: the text of the referred draft, and a dated instrument ending the coalition mission. Neither is public. Note also who pays for the new ministries in the first story.