PMF "ghost fighters": payroll-inflation allegations and the unsolved killing of the force's finance chief

PMF (Hashd al-Shaabi) commanders and factions have repeatedly been accused of keeping fictitious 'phantom' names on the force's state-funded payroll. In late April 2018, Qassem al-Zubaidi, the PMF's Director-General of Finance, was shot dead at his Baghdad home days after opening, on then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's order, via a committee headed by PMF chairman Faleh al-Fayyadh, a probe into 'thousands of fictitious names' allegedly draining PMF salaries; his killing was never solved. The PMF's budgeted strength then rose from about 122,000 in 2021 to between 238,000 and 238,075 in the 2023 federal budget, a roughly 95% increase, with a 2023 PMF budget of IQD 3.56tn (about $2.7bn according to Shafaq News, citing Middle East Eye); Shafaq reported suspicions that this jump itself concealed continued padding of the rolls, while a political analyst cited by Al Rafidain TV put alleged phantom fighters at 'over 80,000'. In 2023 the Sudani government began an audit and verification drive to match PMF rolls against fighters actually serving. No PMF commander, faction or unit has been officially named or charged over phantom salaries, and the results of the 2023 audit are not on record. The Wall Street Journal (31 May 2025) adds an allegation from an unnamed Iraqi banker that militia commanders took rank-and-file members' Qi Card salary cards and padded the rolls with nonexistent or no-show troops to obtain more cards; no commander is named (see Card-based dollar arbitrage: Iraqi prepaid and debit cards on the Visa and Mastercard networks (from 2023 to 2025)).