BAGHDAD — On Nov. 10, the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) announced they blocked the road between Mosul and Raqqa, thus cutting the supply lines between the cities claimed by the Islamic State (IS) as its capitals. Days later, on Nov. 16, Hadi al-Amiri, a prominent PMU leader and the head of the Badr Organization, said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had called on the PMU to enter Syria after liberating the Iraqi territories.
Calls for the PMU to intervene in Syria are not new, as many PMU spokesmen had previously mentioned this possibility when the operations to liberate Mosul first started in October. Now, however, the Syrian regime itself — and its direct leadership in particular — has called on the PMU’s intervention, which means that the sectarian war in the Middle East is entering a new phase.
