What to Know About Kataib Hezbollah, the Iraqi Militia That Held Tsurkov Captive

Kataib Hezbollah, the militia that held Elizabeth Tsurkov hostage for more than two years, is one of the most hard-line and powerful Iranian proxies in Iraq.

The militia kidnapped Ms. Tsurkov, a citizen of Israel and Russia, in March 2023 in Baghdad, she told The New York Times in an interview. U.S. and Israeli officials confirmed that the group abducted her.

Ms. Tsurkov said she was beaten, subjected to psychological torture and sexually assaulted during her captivity. She was released in September after the United States put pressure on Iraq’s government, according to three U.S. officials.

After her release, Kataib Hezbollah claimed knowledge of her captivity and shared details that she had provided in forced confessions, suggesting the militia had held her. The group declined to respond to questions.

Here’s what you need to know about Kataib Hezbollah, which the U.S. government considers a foreign terrorist organization and has repeatedly targeted with airstrikes in Iraq.

Born From Anti-American Sentiment

Iran’s theocratic regime has long wanted U.S. forces out of the Middle East. So it responded quickly when the United States led an invasion of Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, in 2003. Iran recruited, trained and armed Iraqi Shiite militias to attack American troops on Iraqi soil.

From 2003 to 2011, Iran-backed militias in Iraq were responsible for the deaths of at least 603 American troops in Iraq, according to the U.S. military. One of those groups was Kataib Hezbollah, which was founded after the 2003 invasion. It is a separate organization from the Hezbollah movement backed by Iran in Lebanon.

From its inception, the militia was closely tied to Iran’s Quds Force — the overseas arm of the powerful Revolutionary Guards. It made evicting U.S. forces from Iraq a primary focus.

Kataib Hezbollah’s repeated attacks on U.S. Army posts in Iraq and Syria over the years contributed to Washington’s decision in 2009 to designate it as a foreign terrorist organization.”

A Common Enemy

In 2014, the terrorist group Islamic State took over large parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria. Iran and its proxies in Iraq found themselves sharing a common enemy with the United States.

Kataib Hezbollah joined with other mostly Shiite militias to fill the vacuum left by Iraq’s faltering military forces and take on the battle against Islamic State, or ISIS.

Loosely organized under an umbrella called the Popular Mobilization Forces, or P.M.F., those militias helped wrest back territory and, after years of fighting, demolished ISIS’s self-declared caliphate.

Once ISIS was largely defeated in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah returned its attention to driving U.S. forces out of Iraq.

That left the Iraqi government in an uncomfortable position. It was too weak to establish true authority over some of the more established Iran-backed Shiite militias. And Kataib Hezbollah was the most powerful, militarily, among them.

Eventually, the P.M.F. came under the formal supervision of Iraq’s national security forces. But factions like Kataib Hezbollah continued to operate with significant independence from the government and remained under Iran’s influence.

When the first Trump administration restored harsh economic sanctions on Iran, the militias closest to Tehran started increasingly striking American targets in Iraq and Syria.

In 2019, Kataib Hezbollah was accused of an attack on an Iraqi air base that killed an American contractor. That contributed to the U.S. decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, while he was visiting Iraq.

The Iraqi militant leader who helped found Kataib Hezbollah, known by the nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed alongside Mr. Suleimani — underscoring the close and persistent ties between the militia and its patron, Iran.

Influence in Iraq

Iran has long supported Kataib Hezbollah by providing weapons and other aid. Today, the group is considered “the strongest and most ideological pro-Iran militia in Iraq,” according to the Atlantic Council, a think tank.

Kataib Hezbollah is also partly financed by the Iraqi government, with thousands of its members drawing salaries from the state.

The group has long pressed Iraqi leaders to expel U.S. troops from the country.

A New Chapter

Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, another Iran-linked militant group, offered some new clarity about the current state of Kataib Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

Once Israeli forces began a military offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, other Iran-backed militias in the Middle East like Kataib Hezbollah responded with attacks on U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, targeting Israel’s most important ally.

By early 2024, those groups had conducted more than 150 rocket and missile strikes directed at U.S. troops.

The United States responded with strikes in January 2024 that targeted training sites and storage areas for weaponry belonging to Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq.

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.