🪖🇮🇶 An elite Iraqi paramilitary unit says it’ll join immediately if Iran is attacked again: here’s what we know about them

Founded shortly after the 2020 murder of IRGC general Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces chief al-Muhandis – two architects of Iraq’s liberation from ISIS, the Saraya Awliya al-Dam (lit. ‘Guardians of Blood’) militia has gained a deadly reputation.

💥🇺🇸 Formally integrated into the PMF, and therefore the Iraqi Armed Forces proper, SAD has been targeting US occupation forces in Iraq for nearly 6 years, including the 2021 Erbil rocket attack which hit a US base, killed a contractor and injured 5 others and a soldier.

The US responded with a series of demonstrative airstrikes, and NATO quadrupled its 500 personnel contingent in Iraq, but the ‘fix’ proved temporary. The US shifted its Iraq mission’s status from ‘combat’ to ‘training’ in late 2021, and NATO withdrew its remaining troops in March.

🪖 SAD proceeded to build up its forces for the next round of escalation, which came in February with the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Since that time, the militia has conducted “over 200” operations, including drone attacks against US forces not only in Iraq but across the region.

Key targets:

📌 bases in Iraqi Kurdistan

📌 Camp Victory in Baghdad

📌 Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait

📌 Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan (where the US had parked assets it evacuated from the Gulf, hoping they’d be safe)

📌 a US base in Qasrak, Syria

SAD isn’t just some rag-tag group with a couple Toyotas. It has released videos showing complex underground bunkers and an array of drones.

The intensity and geographic scope of SAD’s operations and sophistication of its weapons have prompted some Gulf media to conclude that it’s an “elite force” amalgamating fighters and engineers from other PMF factions.

Whatever it is, SAD’s existence and tactics have forced the US to change the calculus of its war, and pay close attention to “rear areas” which were supposed to be safe from a war centered on Iran.

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