A Visit to the Badr Organisation's Najaf Branch

Iraq is gearing up for parliamentary elections next month, and among the parties that primarily gain votes from the country’s Twelver Shia community, the Badr Organisation is undoubtedly one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent of the groups that are broadly in favour of a strategic alliance with Iran. During a recent trip to the city of Najaf in southern Iraq, I decided to visit the Badr Organisation’s office to get a sense of the group’s current outlook on Iraq and the wider region. To be sure, this visit was not conducted as a formal journalistic interview with the office, but was more of an informal discussion in which I also shared some of my observations on the current situation in Syria, particularly with regards to the status of the Twelver Shia minority there (a topic that is of obvious interest to them).

Outside Badr’s Najaf office. The top poster reads: “The missiles that shook Israel were made under the pulpits of Ashura’.” The figures from left to right are Ayatollah Sistani, Ayatollah Khamane’i (Iran’s Supreme Leader), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qasem Soleimani.