The Iraqi state has once again proved its impotence in the face of Tehran-backed paramilitaries. The Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi militia confederation went on the rampage last week after a powerful militia leader, Qassim Muslih, was detained on charges of plotting assassinations and murdering protesters. Militant leaders denounced the arrest as a “kidnapping” — as if Iraq’s security forces and police had no legal jurisdiction over the Hashd! Thousands of militia fighters flooded into the Green Zone, the heavily fortified heart of Baghdad’s governing system, wielding RPGs and other offensive weaponry. Regular security forces melted away, leaving militants free to menace ministries and embassies. With Kalashnikov-wielding militias encircling his offices and family home, Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi was summoned like a naughty schoolboy to meet three of the Hashd’s most powerful leaders — Hadi Al-Amiri, Abu-Fadak Al-Mohammedawi and Falih Al-Fayyad — to explain why their colleague had been detained. We may never know what threats were made to the prime minister, but within hours Muslih was duly handed over to the Hashd’s Security Directorate. The only significant concession was that no photos of Muslih would be published, so that the prime minister’s abject humiliation would not be carried to its excruciating extremes. This is not the first such farce: Soon after Kadhimi began his job a year ago, amid sincere promises to get tough with the militants, a number of Hashd figures were arrested for firing missiles. But after another massive paramilitary show of force around the Green Zone, Kadhimi caved in and released these criminals into Hashd custody. It’s as if the prime minister were trying to offer incontrovertible demonstrations of the Hashd’s impunity! This also sets a dangerous precedent for national unity: Hundreds of Sunnis were executed after 10-minute trials based on hearsay evidence of Daesh sympathies, but the Hashd is proving an even greater existential threat to Iraq’s existence than Daesh and its personnel are now apparently untouchable. Sources I spoke to worry about whether Muslih will later come out and flaunt his immunity; or whether he will be smuggled to Iran, like so many other death squad commanders with gallons of Iraqi blood on their hands. Likewise, over the past couple of years prime ministerial executive orders demanded that these militia factions cease their independent existence, merge into the regular armed forces, and close the hundreds of “economic offices” set up across the country through which militants extort citizens and businesses. Of course, these directives were ignored; instead,highway and border checkpoints have multiplied, earning these forces more than $6 billion a year. The constitution explicitly forbids paramilitary personnel from participating in parliamentary elections, yet somehow they’ve become the most powerful component of the parliament. With elections in just months, this is a body blow to the authority and sovereignty of the Iraqi state from which it will struggle to recover. Militias are inexorably growing stronger than the state, while also monopolizing key state posts from the inside, leaving Iraq’s administration like a rotten, hollowed-out tree. Ahead of these elections we can see militias rivaling one another through a variety of strategies; in some cases superficially distancing themselves from Iran and ludicrously portraying themselves as Iraqi nationalists, while elsewhere seeking to enforce their control so vigorously that citizens have only one viable choice to vote for. The Iraqi state has once again proved its impotence in the face of Tehran-backed paramilitaries. Baria Alamuddin Muslih was charged with involvement in the killing of activist Ihab Al-Wazni, head of the Karbala protest coordination commission, who was murdered in front of his home on May 9 by gunmen on motorbikes. About 80 activists have been killed in such targeted assassinations. Often these killings occurred in public places, in broad daylight, or in the presence of police. About 600 protesters were murdered during the past two years of demonstrations, with many killed by militia snipers and armed thugs. I first came across Qasim Muslih a few years ago while conducting research on these militia groups. Muslih had been a commander of one of the forces loyal to Ayatollah Sistani, but at the behest of Hashd hardliners such as Abu-Mahdi al-Muhandis he betrayed Sistani and established a breakaway force, the Tuffuf Brigade, which aligned itself with the nastiest pro-Iran elements. As the Hashd’s operations commander in Anbar, Muslih became one of the principal figures overseeing the Hashd’s fortifications on the Syria-Iraq border, which became a pivotal location for smuggling Iranian missiles and profiteering from the full spectrum of contraband goods. Indeed, sources close to Ayatollah Sistani asserted that they had “nothing to do” with Muslih and “would not interfere” with any legal measures taken against him. Muslih is a nobody — a hired thug. He was bought off and elevated to his powerful post purely as a ruse for sabotaging the Sistani militias. However, when Baghdad erupts and a constitutional crisis is triggered over his mere arrest, how much greater is the absolute impunity enjoyed by the real warlords, terrorists and mass-murderers such as Amiri, Mohammedawi and Qais Al-Khazali? Like death by a thousand cuts, on each successive occasion that Hashd militias subvert the Iraqi state, we come closer to this state ceasing to exist in any meaningful form; becoming like Syria, and perhaps Lebanon, a terrorist-dominated vacuum with Iran as the supreme protagonist. “Who killed me?” was the dominant slogan in recent demonstrations against the impunity enjoyed by militias and the security forces in murdering activists and protesters. These recent actions by Hashd militias were like a brazen admission of guilt: “Yes, we killed you, and we will keep on killing you. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.” Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state. Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view