Some factions of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are less than satisfied with the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Washington on March 19-23, given his controversial statements about his stance toward them.
Abadi said March 22, during his speech to the 68-member global coalition to defeat the Islamic State (IS), “There is an Iraqi force today fighting IS comprising the Iraqi army, the counterterrorism apparatus and the peshmerga [forces].” He did not include the PMU, but later, in a different context, he mentioned them as “volunteers who took part in the fighting against IS side by side with our security forces … under the command of our security forces.”