Hashd al-Shabi Spokesman Says Planned US Withdrawal From Iraq Is an Illusion

WASHINGTON, United States — Kazım el-Fartusi, spokesperson for the Seyyid al-Shuhada Battalions operating within Iraq's Hashd al-Shabi paramilitary force, said Tuesday that the planned U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq amounts to an illusion. El-Fartusi said his group, while operating outside state structures, remains a significant part of the Iraqi population and will never surrender its weapons. He argued that previous U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq were achieved not through agreements signed in Baghdad or Washington, but through the pressure of resistance arms. The spokesman described the September withdrawal plan as a deception, stating his faction's weapons are not warehoused items transferred from location to location but the independent arms of free men. El-Fartusi said religious authorities would not call for the surrender of resistance weapons, adding that weapons threatening social security and disciplined weapons are not the same thing.