هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
No one knows what is happening behind the sandy berms built by the armed groups that seized Jurf al-Sakhar, between Baghdad to the north and Babil province to the south. Almost everything known about the area comes from speculation or leaks. The groups have sealed off the area, turning it into a mystery and making it difficult to know what lies inside – or who is there.
Jurf al-Sakhar: They passed through here
The story of Jurf al-Sakhar cannot be reduced to what the area has become today. Its history stretches back centuries, including a period when it served as a battleground between the Ottoman and Persian empires, and later to 2003, when US forces invaded Iraq and Washington set out to remake Mesopotamia in the name of democracy.
Following the US invasion and the outbreak of the Iraqi resistance, areas south of Baghdad were dubbed the “Triangle of Death” in US military literature because of the intensity of the fighting there. The region’s extensive agricultural land and dense groves provided fighters with cover, making it easier to carry out attacks and disappear among the crops.
At the same time, the Iraqi resistance was subjected to a barrage of accusations, including allegations of sectarianism and attacks on Shia travellers heading from Baghdad towards the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. While such attacks did take place, they were portrayed at the time as far more widespread than they actually were.
Then came 2014, when the advance of the Islamic State (IS) began swallowing up Iraqi cities and provinces, starting with Mosul. Armed and political forces began to lay the groundwork for what would become the largest seizure of Iraqi territory under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
That territory was Jurf al-Sakhar. But the story did not end with the battle for control of the area, in which rival forces competed to establish their hold over it. Instead, the battle marked the beginning of an even more opaque chapter – one that would leave Jurf al-Sakhar more mysterious than at any point in its long history.
Displacement: The seed of a long occupation
For political forces with armed wings, the events of 2014 offered an opportunity to pursue a demographic transformation that had long been at the centre of bloody conflict, particularly between 2006 and 2008.
After the bombing of the shrine of the two imams Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-Askari in Samarra in February 2006, Shia armed groups launched retaliatory attacks on Sunni areas in Baghdad and its southern outskirts. But critics say this was only part of a broader effort to alter the demographic makeup of Baghdad and its surrounding areas under various pretexts. By that period, international humanitarian organisations had documented around 2.8 million displaced Iraqis.
The emergence of Islamic State (IS) provided what those armed groups had long been waiting for. The extremist organisation’s territorial expansion prompted the formation of an international coalition on an unprecedented scale to fight it, creating a new political and military environment in which those groups could pursue objectives they had previously failed to achieve.
Under the banner of fighting IS, they worked to empty entire areas of their inhabitants. Jurf al-Sakhar was among the first. In October 2014, the Iraqi government and the factions that would later become known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) announced that Jurf al-Sakhar had been cleared of IS fighters. The operation was followed by the displacement of its residents, officially justified on the grounds of clearing the area of unexploded ordnance and conducting security checks on residents and their backgrounds before allowing them to return. But they never did.
Why didn’t the residents return?
The justification was always at hand: families had to undergo security vetting, while the remnants of war had to be cleared before people could return. Yet neither process has led to a return, even after 12 years. The question is therefore no longer simply what the forces controlling the area say, but what has happened on the ground during those years of tight militia control.
In 2019, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) published a study examining areas where displaced people had not returned. It identified Jurf al-Sakhar as an exceptional case in Babil province.
The IOM described the area as an inaccessible, predominantly Sunni Arab enclave that could not be reached or assessed and where no returns had been recorded. It linked the continued displacement to the security situation and the composition of the forces controlling the area, concluding that resolving the issue would require negotiations with the various security actors operating there.
Today, however, the contradiction is even more pronounced. In June 2026, Babil Governor Ali Turki al-Jamali said residents of Jurf al-Sakhar could not return for the time being. He attributed the situation in part to the expiration of agricultural contracts under which some residents had worked their land, while also saying that many had since settled in other areas and were “no longer displaced in the traditional sense”.
Little ambiguity remains about the continued exclusion of Jurf al-Sakhar’s residents. Whatever the original intentions may have been, the displacement has become an established reality on the ground – one that the governor’s own remarks appear to acknowledge.
What is inside the area?
No one can say with certainty what lies inside Jurf al-Sakhar. But the area’s continued closure and the prevention of around 140,000 residents from returning 12 years after its “liberation” from Islamic State (IS) have inevitably fuelled questions and speculation.
One of the most persistent theories is that the area has become a base for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In March 2020, the United States carried out strikes on facilities in Jurf al-Sakhar, saying they were targeting sites linked to the manufacture, storage and testing of munitions belonging to Hezbollah Brigades. The area has also been reported as a launch point for operations targeting countries neighbouring Iraq following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, further fuelling claims that it is under the control of Iran-aligned armed groups.
In February 2026, Reuters reported that air strikes had targeted Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) positions inside Jurf al-Sakhar, killing two people and wounding others, according to a PMF spokesman. Reuters also noted that the PMF includes factions aligned with Iran.
The European Union Agency for Asylum, meanwhile, said in its 2025 Iraq report that Jurf al-Sakhar was controlled by Hezbollah Brigades, with fighters from Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, as well as allied foreign fighters. The report cited Iraqi reports and security sources.
An investigation published by the NIRIJ network in August 2026 analysed archived satellite imagery from 2014, 2025 and 2026, comparing five sectors of the area.
The comparison showed a decline in the urban density that had characterised the residential areas before the war, alongside the emergence of organised buildings, new road networks, levelled areas and clusters of construction that did not exist in the same form in 2014.
NIRIJ stressed that the imagery alone could not establish who built the new structures or determine their exact purpose. That distinction is crucial. Buildings that resemble warehouses or military facilities do not, by themselves, establish that they are missile depots or headquarters belonging to the Revolutionary Guard.
The images nevertheless reveal another reality that is difficult to overlook: Jurf al-Sakhar has undergone a profound physical transformation over the past decade. Its former residential fabric has receded, while new roads and construction areas have appeared. At the same time, the area has remained closed, to varying degrees, to its former residents and to journalists.
At this point, Jurf al-Sakhar ceases to be merely a security question. It becomes a question of the land itself: how it has been transformed, who controls it, and who has the right to use it.
Available evidence points to an area under tight security and military control, but it does not reveal everything happening inside. The opacity surrounding Jurf al-Sakhar is also tied to a broader overlap between state institutions and armed groups that operate within Iraq’s political system.
The Coordination Framework, the parliamentary alliance of predominantly Shia political forces, has played a central role in nominating prime ministers. It also includes political parties whose affiliated armed factions the United States has designated as terrorist organisations. At the same time, some of their leaders have openly described their role as part of Iran’s broader deterrence strategy.
Jurf al-Sakhar sits at the centre of that overlap: a territory formally within the Iraqi state, but one whose access, security and future appear to be shaped by forces operating both within and beyond the state’s conventional structures.
Who controls Jurf al-Sakhar?
The main factions reported to control parts of Jurf al-Sakhar include Harakat al-Nujaba, Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada – ideological factions that openly identify with Iran’s doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or the guardianship of the jurist, and whose leaders have publicly declared their readiness to defend Iran during its recent war.
Since 2014, after the area’s residents were displaced and Jurf al-Sakhar was effectively sealed off from official and unofficial access, the area has witnessed movements and redeployments by armed factions. Unverified reports have also alleged the presence of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel or advisers inside the area.
Publicly documented, however, is the reported presence of weapons-production facilities in Jurf al-Sakhar. Reports have described weapons factories operating under the control of armed factions, with limited or no effective government oversight.
For Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government, Jurf al-Sakhar is therefore closely tied to the broader question of bringing weapons under state control. The government initially set 30 September 2026 as the deadline for completing its campaign to confine weapons to state hands.
That timetable, however, has since come under pressure. Reports say armed factions opposed the government’s approach. At the same time, Iran sent officials to Baghdad to negotiate the issue and seek a formula that would let the government avoid abandoning its commitment without triggering a confrontation with the factions.
The government’s stated objective is to bring weapons under state control without resorting to confrontation. Jurf al-Sakhar is likely to be one of the most difficult tests of that approach.
Counter Terrorism Service forces have begun deploying around Jurf al-Sakhar and nearby Jurf al-Naddaf. So far, however, the deployment appears to have had little practical effect, amid reports that the armed factions have refused to vacate their headquarters in the area.
The government’s handling of Jurf al-Sakhar could therefore become a significant test of its ability to extend state authority over territory controlled by powerful armed actors. The unresolved question is whether Baghdad can establish a security presence while also addressing the return of residents displaced for 12 years.
A possible way out would be a limited arrangement under which some residents are allowed to return. At the same time, security forces establish a partial presence in areas the armed factions have relinquished. Such an arrangement would allow the government to show progress without triggering confrontation.
Whether such a compromise can be reached remains uncertain. For the residents of Jurf al-Sakhar, however, the central question is more immediate: after 12 years of displacement, will they finally be allowed to return home?