The al-Mukhtar Brigades, also called Saraya al-Makhtar or Bahraini Islamic Resistance, is a

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...

insurgent An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric warfare, asymmetric na ...

movement that has taken part in several attacks against government targets. It is classified as a terrorist organization by multiple countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. The United States and Bahrain have both accused the

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; fa, سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی, Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enghelāb-e Eslāmi, lit=Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution also Sepāh or Pasdaran for short) is a branch o ...

(IRGC) of backing the organization. It is one of the main opposition movements in Bahrain to take up arms and is one of the rebel factions of the Shia insurgency in Bahrain, the main other being the al-Ashtar Brigades.

Ideology

The Brigades swore allegiance to

Khomeinism Khomeinism refers to the religious and political ideas of the leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeinism also refers to the ruling clerical class of Iran after 1979. It can also be used to refer to the radicalization of segmen ...

in 2016, on the anniversary of the death of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Brigades have an official goal to overthrow the House of Khalifa and to turn Bahrain into a province of Iran. The Mukhtar Brigades supported Shia rebels in Saudi Arabia during the

Qatif conflict The Qatif conflict is a modern phase of sectarian tensions and violence in Eastern Arabia between Arab Shia Muslims and Arab Sunni majority, which has ruled Saudi Arabia since early 20th century. The conflict encompasses civil unrest which has ...

History

The al-Mukhtar Brigades was founded in 2013, two years after the end of the

2011 Bahraini uprising The 2011 Bahraini uprising was a series of anti-government protests in Bahrain led by the Shia-dominant and some Sunni minority Bahraini opposition from 2011 until 2014. The protests were inspired by the unrest of the 2011 Arab Spring and prote ...

. The group has carried out around 200 attacks in the country, primarily involving the use of

improvised explosive device An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechan ...

s against security forces and

Peninsula Shield Force The Peninsula Shield Force (or ''Peninsula Shield''; ar, دِرْعُ الجَزيرَة, Dirʿ al-Jazīra) is the military arm of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is intended to deter, and respond to military aggression against any of t ...

officers. While attacks have decreased since 2018, the organization is still active. After the

assassination of Qasem Soleimani On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed by a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. The drone targeted and killed Soleimani while he was on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi i ...

, the Brigades signed a statement publicly condemning the United States' action and warning of retaliatory attacks. The document stated that it "consider all its

he United States' He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

interests and presence in Bahrain to be legitimate targets" and vowed to carry out attacks on US targets in Bahrain. In June 2017, the group hacked the

Twitter account Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

of a Bahraini politician who had previously served as Foreign Minister. The Mukhtar brigades also have activities abroad, and have intervened in the Syrian civil war to support regime forces, where the

Small Wars Journal The ''Small Wars Journal'' (''SWJ'') is an online magazine focusing on intrastate conflict. Aside from its online magazine, ''SWJ'' hosts an accompanying blog and the Small Wars Council discussion board. Other site features include an online refer ...

says they collaborate with

Hezbollah Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...

. The organization has publicly admitted its close ties to the Iraqi pro-Iranian Kata'ib al-Imam Ali and Saraya al-Khorasani paramilitaries.

Designation as a terrorist group

Bahrain recognizes the Brigades as a terrorist organization. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates all classified the al-Mukhtar Brigades as a terror group in July 2017, and were joined by the United Kingdom in December that year. In 2020, the United States under the

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

formally identified the al-Mukhtar Brigades as a terrorist organization, which some commentators have suggested may partially be in reward to the Bahrain–Israel normalization agreement.

References

{{Reflist 2013 establishments in Bahrain Axis of Resistance Terrorism in Bahrain Shia Islamist groups Organizations designated as terrorist by Bahrain Organizations designated as terrorist by Egypt Organizations designated as terrorist by Saudi Arabia Organizations designated as terrorist by the United Arab Emirates Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom Bahrain–Iran relations