For the past four months, the fate of a Qatari hunting party including members of the royal family held hostage in Iraq has been secretly negotiated between officials in Doha and tribes in Basra.

The Iraqi government in Baghdad has not been a part of the process, and, according to Gulf officials, it has no capacity to deliver an outcome, even if it wanted to. Qatar and other Gulf states, including Kuwait, who are leading efforts to rescue the group are feeling increasingly frustrated at the lack of ways to resolve the situation.

“There is no point even contacting [Haider al-]Abadi, or his people,” said a prominent member of a neighbouring Gulf state of the Iraqi prime minister. “This is the tribes and the militias, in particular Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. They laugh at the government. They control Iraq, particularly the Shia areas.”

As Iraq’s parliament this week again blocked efforts by Abadi to introduce reforms, legislators and protesters in Baghdad itself said they feared the government was now powerless to impose its will in the lawless south or the rest of the war-ravaged country.



Across the region, there is a growing belief that the beleaguered Iraqi leader can bring no influence to multiple crises, including the withering siege of Fallujah, which is led by Shia militias and the Iraqi army (which nominally answers to Abadi) or the fight against Islamic State.



Shia leaders in two countries struggle for control over Iraqi state Read more

In both cases, state control has been ceded to militias. The Qatari hunters, who included members of the ruling al-Thani family, had entered Iraq with government-issued permits, to capture falcons and hunt bustards prized as game by the Gulf elite.

They were rounded up by more than 100 armed men, driving in a large convoy, and have since been held in small towns near Basra. Ransoms have been demanded for their release.



In Anbar province, which is the epicentre of the war against Isis, military gains, aided by US airstrikes and advisors on the ground, have done nothing to quell festering resentment between Sunni civilians who dominate the region and Shia militias who now lord over it.



Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, is one of the most important frontlines in the war against Isis. It has been surrounded by Iraqi forces, among them a large, and disproportionately influential number of Shia militias.

Iraqi army commanders and militia leaders say they regard the city’s remaining residents as being loyal to Isis. Since December, they have steadily tightened a siege that has seen food prices soar. The siege has become ever more effective since US-backed Iraqi forces have ousted Isis from the town of Heet and cut off supply lines that ran towards Fallujah.

“I am coming here today to protest about Fallujah,” said Fadhil al-Dulaimi, a resident of the city who was forced to flee two years ago when it was overrun by Isis. Ever since, he has stayed with family in Baghdad, who sponsored his entry to the capital – a right that many thousands of others fleeing the chaos have been denied.



“It is dangerous for me to come here to the gates of the Green Zone,” he said. “Every guard can see my name on my identity card, and I could be disappeared at any point. But Fallujah cannot sink into the sand. They cannot just starve to death everyone who stayed behind.”



A former Fallujah resident who fled the city one year ago and now squats in abandoned farmland outside nearby Abu Ghraib said Shia militia were cutting off the city’s supply lines.

“We ran a truck business in Fallujah. My brother and my cousins stayed behind despite [Isis]. But that does not mean that we are with them. Most of those who stayed had no other option. But everyone who didn’t flee is being called terrorists by the militias, and the government can do nothing about it.”

Aid officials in Baghdad estimate that around 30,000 civilians remain in Fallujah, a city whose population had recovered to an estimated 200,000 of the pre-war population of 300,000 by the time Isis seized it.

“The humanitarian picture in Fallujah is bleak and getting bleaker,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, earlier this year. “Greater international attention to the besieged towns and cities of the region is needed or the results for civilians could be calamitous.”



In Basra, meanwhile, locals say that the fate of the Qataris will depend on the will of the hostages’ governments, not their own.



“What can Iraq do, even if it wanted,” said one 23-year-old local businessman, who identified himself as Mehdi Mudher. “Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t help. It is embarrassing for a government to be as weak as this.

“I tell you the tribes and Asa’ib have never been stronger. It is impossible to tell which is which. All these black cars with black windows, posters of [Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah] Khamenei. It is lawless here.

“There is support for [Ayatollah] Sistani, but no one even talks about the government. They simply are not relevant.”