The (mercifully brief and now concluded) incarceration of the US freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson in Iraq at the hands of the Shia militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH) reveals much about who really runs Iraq.
The evidence is not encouraging. Kittleson’s release appears to have been obtained in a process in which two elements of the Iraqi state negotiated with each other to produce an outcome that both wanted.
According to a report by Mustafa Saadoon for the Al-Hurra website, Kittleson was held in the Jurf al-Nasr area south of Baghdad.
Formerly called Jurf al-Shakhr, this area is well known to Iraqis as a zone of independent control maintained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-supported Kataib Hezbollah organization.
Representatives of Kataib Hezbollah contacted the Iraqi authorities on April 1, demanding the release of four members of the organization recently detained for participating in a rocket attack on a US base in Hasakah, Syria.
These individuals have now been released in exchange for the freeing of Shelly Kittleson.
An individual found in one of the cars used during Kittleson’s abduction was immediately apprehended by Iraqi authorities and reported to be affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces’ 45th Brigade.
Brigade 45 is one of the appellations used by Kataib Hezbollah in its incarnation as an element of the Iraqi state security forces. (It also operates Brigades 46 and 47 of the same structure).
The PMF is the framework by which the Iran-supported Shia militias were designated part of the official structures of the US- and west-supported Iraqi state and government.
Kittleson's abduction reveals Iraq's absurd contradiction
This arrangement always contained a contradiction at its heart. The current war against Iran brought that contradiction into the open. The process of the abduction and release of Kittleson revealed it in all its absurdity.
US President Donald Trump describes Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as a ‘friend.’ In recent days, elements from within the security forces of this friend engaged in the abduction of a US citizen.
Other parts of the same security forces then negotiated with the abductors to secure the release of the US citizen in return for the release of the Iraqi personnel who had carried out an attack on a US base.
A win for everyone – except for the US, which, as a result of this episode, saw members of the Iraqi security forces who attacked one of its bases released in return for the freedom of a US citizen abducted by members of the same force.
Kataib Hezbollah is a murderous organization, with the blood of many innocent Iraqis on its hands. The Jurf al-Nasr complex contains privately maintained prisons and torture centers.
The Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was abducted by the organization on March 21, 2023, was also held for part of her two-and-a-half-year captivity in this area.
Interestingly, Kittleson and Tsurkov were both abducted in the same district of central Baghdad – Karrada.
A brief personal aside, perhaps of relevance: Kataib Hezbollah’s relations with foreign journalists in Iraq are mainly predicated on mutual suspicion. Nevertheless, there have been different phases.
During the war against the Islamic State (ISIS), for a brief period, the organization tried to reach out to the Western media.
At that time, as part of a reporting project on the Shia militias, whom I believed to be the most significant rising force in the country, I ‘embedded’ with the organization for a few days.
The frontline between ISIS and KH at that time ran through Husaybah City in Anbar Province.
I spent time with the fighters there, watched them take part in a short exchange of fire with the Sunni jihadis, and crawled forward to the very furthest point of their position, with the black-and-grey-clad ISIS fighters just on the other side of what had once been a school basketball court.
(Kataib, not having much experience with foreign journalists, was much more accommodating regarding requests of this kind than many other organizations).
In my conversations and my observation of KH, I was struck by two contradictory impressions. In terms of their professionalism and commitment, they were by far the most impressive of the several Shia militias with whom I spent time.
The fighters were all young, fit-looking, uniformed, clearly familiar with their tactical tasks, and committed to their mission.
On the other hand, they would solemnly repeat claims that were obviously absurd and ought to have appeared so even to them.
A KH mid-level commander, for example, told me that the US Air Force, which was meant to be their ally against ISIS, was in fact dropping daily supplies to the Sunni jihadis.
A couple of years after my brief sojourn with KH, I was called into a meeting in Jerusalem and told – by people in a position to know – that my name had come up on a Kataib Hezbollah kill list and that I was not to go back to Iraq.
Evidently, the organization had retrospectively discovered my Israeli connections and regretted the hospitality they had afforded me.
Kataib Hezbollah, Iraqi authorities, are one and the same
According to a Shia politician quoted by Al-Hurra, Kataib Hezbollah negotiated ‘with Iraqi authorities over Kittleson’s release.’ This sentence contains the absurdity, which is the crux of the matter. The ‘Iraqi authorities’ negotiating with Kataib Hezbollah is the Iraqi state negotiating with itself.
In its political manifestation, known as Harakat Huqooq (the movement of rights), KH won five seats in the 2025 parliamentary elections. It is, as a result, a component part of the Coordination Framework, which is the governing coalition in Iraq.
In its official military incarnation, as mentioned above, it controls the 45th, 46th, and 47th brigades of the PMF, a body which ostensibly answers to the Iraqi prime minister (though large parts of it actually answer to the IRGC and Tehran).
And in its independent paramilitary and terrorist iteration, Kataib Hezbollah engages in kidnappings of both Iraqis and – as in the case of Shelly Kittleson and Elizabeth Tsurkov – foreign visitors. Sometimes it carries out murders too.
In the context of the war between Iran and the US, this situation is becoming increasingly untenable.
Since October 2023, and with greater intensity since February 2026, forces associated with the PMF – that is, affiliated with the government of Iraq – engaged in ongoing attacks against US personnel and positions.
Then, a government-aligned political-military force abducted a US citizen. Her swift release is the only happy part of this. Hopefully, this incident will also finally lead to clarity in the US understanding of the situation in Iraq.
The country (with the exception of the Kurdish north) is in the hands of bodies and individuals answerable to Tehran.
Iraq, as currently governed, represents a textbook success story for the IRGC’s method of combining political and military power to hollow out states and turn them into satrapies. Coherent US policy toward the country requires recognition of this reality.