Jurf Al-Sakhr is an agricultural district located 40 miles south of Baghdad in the province of Babylon. It is known for its strategic location, which looks out over the governorates of Babylon in the south and Anbar in the west, as well as Karbala, Najaf, and all the way to the Arar border crossing with Saudi Arabia. Jurf Al-Sakhar residents were displaced and barred from returning to their homes. Terrorist Popular Mobilization militias have used this area as a military base since 2014. The militias that control Jurf Al-Sakhr are “Kataeb Hezbollah, Al-Nujaba, and Sayyid Al-Shuhada”, all of which are closely linked with Iran, in addition to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The Iraqi government and its forces, such as the army and police, are unable to enter Jurf Al-Sakhr because the militias refuse to let them. It also came to the point of threatening three prime ministers if one of them attempted to address this region. For example, when the former Minister of Interior, “Mohammed Al-Ghabban,” was detained while attempting to enter Jurf Al-Sakhr, he was released after the intervention of Iraqi officials who negotiated with the militias in order to end the minister’s detention and avoid embarrassing the Iraqi government. The confession of former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to the British newspaper The Times confirmed the existence of corrupt armed wings that the Iraqi government could not control. This confession is clear evidence that shows how weak the Iraqi government is. According to Al-Hurra, “The Iraqi forces cannot enter the Jurf Al-Sakhar area because it includes groups and actual regular battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, as well as the vanguard force of the Quds Force’s nucleus for foreign operations.” The question that needs to be answered is, what exactly is going on in the Jurf Al-Sakhar region?
Jurf al-Sakhr has military importance because there are a number of military installations and factories there which were affiliated with the dissolved Military Industrialization Authority of the tyrant Saddam’s regime, which qualified the region to be an advanced Iranian base within the front of what has come to be called the line of resistance and resistance extending from Tehran through Iraq to the shores of the Mediterranean to Syria and Lebanon. According to Reuters news agency, “Jurf al-Sakhar has become an isolated military area, and that Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to its allies in Iraq, and that experts in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are helping these groups to start making missiles as part of an alternative plan if Tehran is attacked, and they have been stored in facilities and camps in the Al-Za’franiya area, east of Baghdad, and Jurf Al-Sakhar, north of Babylon, a missile activity and flow that is carried out with the knowledge of the Iraqi government.” This was also confirmed by the Al-Hurra channel, which said, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard built a missile factory, a small base, and special units for launching drones in the Jurf Al-Sakhar area.” In fact, many media sources refer to Jurf al-Sakhar at the moment as the “Iranian colony” due to the presence of several centers affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which ensure the training and supervision of the militia. The area of Jurf Al-Sakhr is known for its greenery and abundance of orchards, making it an ideal location for the stationing of militias and the establishment of warehouses for their weapons away from oversight. The Al-Hurra report stated, “Jurf Al-Sakhar contains camps for training opposition forces, including Arab elements affiliated with the Bahraini, Kuwaiti, and Saudi Hezbollah, and elements of the Yemeni Houthi militia, in addition to foreigners belonging to the Afghan who are being trained by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.” The militias affiliated with Iran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have turned Jurf Al-Sakhar into secret detention centers and prisons, Sharia courts, and mass graves that contain hundreds of kidnapped Sunni and Shiite governorates and activists of the Tishreen Revolution (the 2019–2021 Iraqi protests). Media sources say that the Hezbollah Brigades have about 11 large and medium prisons that hold at least 3,000 detainees and missing people who have not been reported to the Iraqi government. From an economic standpoint, the Jurf Al-Sakhar district’s abundance of water and soil’s ability to sustain plant growth qualify it to be a funding center for terrorist state militias using their own resources. Iran and its affiliated militias are attempting to turn the area into an investment colony in order to fund regional expansion projects by establishing projects for raising poultry and fish, fattening calves, and agricultural fields under the supervision of Iranian agricultural engineers and veterinarians. In addition to this, pro-Iranian militias in the region have established a center in which they cultivate and distribute marijuana and other illegal drugs, as well as a center for the trade in narcotics. With the approach of the elections in Iraq, the Shiite and Sunni political parties are seeking to use the Jurf Al-Sakhar file as a means of electoral propaganda by unleashing sectarian rhetoric and playing on the suffering of the people of Jurf Al-Sakhar who pin their hopes on returning to their homes and trying to open the files of their kidnapped and disappeared sons who are languishing in militia prisons on the Jurf Al-Sakhar. But the question is, will this electoral ploy fool the Iraqis, or have the Iraqis learned lessons from the previous years?