Elizabeth Tsurkov Details How Iraq’s Militias Use Kidnapping, Wealth, and Elections to Consolidate Power

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) — Researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov’s detailed account of her 903-day captivity by an Iran-aligned Iraqi militia paints a stark picture of how those armed groups have shifted from ideological “resistance” to systematic state capture — and how Tehran now leverages them to extract cash, fuel, and political power from Iraq.

Tsurkov, who was held by a powerful faction widely linked to Kata’ib Hezbollah, says her kidnappers demanded a $600 million ransom and made clear, through their behavior and conversations, that their priorities had long since moved from battlefield heroics to wealth accumulation, political influence, and commercial rackets. Her detention and the ransom demand are described in reporting based on her testimony. 

From guns to gatekeepers

Tsurkov’s article argues that the militias’ primary businesses today are not guerrilla warfare, but rather the economic control of border trade, oil flows, informal currency markets, and state procurement.

She documents how militia “economic offices” extract protection money from private companies, impose illicit tolls at checkpoints, seize property through intimidation, set up front companies, and capture government contracts — activities that have created enormous illicit revenue streams for commanders and their networks.

Analysts and reporting in recent months have documented similar trafficking and smuggling networks that enrich militias and proxies while generating hard currency for Tehran.

A Reuters investigation described a fuel-oil smuggling network tied to Iraqi militias that produced at least $1 billion for Iran and its proxies, illustrating how energy flows have become a lucrative line of business.

Dollars, oil and the ‘land bridge’

Tsurkov’s account further asserts that many of these proceeds are routed toward Iran — in the form of physical dollars, oil swaps, and other in-kind transfers — helping Tehran to blunt the impact of international sanctions.

Independent reporting and policy studies have identified multiple mechanisms by which dollars and goods are funneled from Iraq to Iran: informal currency dealers, front companies, prepaid schemes and oil trade channels.

These networks have become a central lifeline for Iran and an important source of revenue for allied Iraqi militias.

The collapse of the Assad regime’s prior logistical role in late 2024, Tsurkov notes, removed a previously important overland route for weapons and materiel — a development that pushed Tehran and its Iraqi partners to reconfigure their priorities toward financial and electoral operations rather than overt military projection.

Independent analysts have likewise argued that the fall of Syria’s old order changed the regional logistics picture, reducing some militia functions while increasing the emphasis on economic channels.

Buying influence — and elections

Tsurkov links the militias’ financial power directly to recent electoral outcomes. According to her reporting, militias coerced membership registration, pressured fighters to register family members, and used their payroll networks to mobilise votes.

On top of coercion, she says, the groups spent looted state funds on an unprecedented vote-buying operation: hiring millions as “observers,” paying scores of local brokers, and using cash distributions to secure ballots.

Those tactics, she argues, produced a sizeable parliamentary increase for militia-friendly lists — an outcome bought with public money rather than earned through popular legitimacy.

The wider reporting environment backs up the existence of extensive illicit financing and manipulation around Baghdad’s political economy.

U.S. and international authorities have investigated and sanctioned networks linked to laundering and smuggling that benefit Iran-aligned actors, and recent Treasury actions have targeted intermediary networks accused of moving funds and goods into Iran through Iraqi channels.

A changed calculus in Tehran and Baghdad

Tsurkov’s central analytical claim is that Iran now values these militias less for frontline fighting than as economic instruments: conduits for dollars and oil, managers of illicit trade, and electoral force multipliers that keep friendly parties in power in Baghdad.

That strategic reorientation — combined with intense U.S. and Israeli intelligence pressure and high-value targeting — has made militia leadership more risk-averse. As Tsurkov writes, commanders who once sought martyrdom now appear far more intent on preserving accumulated wealth and political position.

That turning point has consequences: the most dangerous effect of these militias is no longer confined to their battlefield capabilities. Rather, the risk lies in their ability to capture state institutions, loot public resources, and convert national sovereignty into leverage for Tehran — undermining governance and eroding public services for millions of Iraqis.

What the testimony implies for policy

Tsurkov argues that effective responses must reflect this transformation. Policies narrowly focused on kinetic containment or on battlefield deterrence will miss the central problem: a political-economic nexus that turns public budgets into private—and foreign—treasure.

Countermeasures, she suggests, should prioritize financial transparency, anti-smuggling enforcement, prosecution of illicit networks, and political reforms that reduce the militias’ ability to translate looted wealth into electoral power.

Her testimony — corroborated in parts by investigative reporting into fuel, banking, and cash-smuggling networks — frames Iraq not as a peripheral theatre, but as a strategic revenue artery for Iran in a period of sanctions and economic pressure.