THE OSMOTIC PATH: THE PMU AND THE IRAQI STATE

The most interesting evolution in Iraq’s security governance is currently represented by the peculiarity of the hybridization process characterizing the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and the vast array of non-state/quasi-state militias. Since 2014 on, hybridization in state authorities as well as in the security domain has enhanced, although representing a recurrent feature of the Iraqi system which started in the Eighties: the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU, al-Hashd al-Shaabi) embody a new phase of this trend. Today Iraq looks like a plurality of competing but fluid centers of power linked to domestic and/or external patrons. Notwithstanding militias, as the PMU, succeeded to enter and hybridize the state, is the marja’iyya, a non-state authority, to represent paradoxically a source of legitimation for both state institutions and state competitors acting, at the same time, as a shield limiting the expansion of the Iranian model in security governance.