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In late 2003, I was asked to take on the task of demobilizing Iraqi militias. This would later be named the “transition and reintegration” program. Shortly after the program commenced, efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq veered off in directions no one wanted.
The task I took on was conceptually simple but practically daunting: persuade Iraq’s armed factions to lay down their weapons and trust in a future they could not yet see while violence escalated. The United States now faces a familiar but more challenging version of that dilemma as it considers how to disarm Hamas in a devastated Gaza. The understandable impulse to search for easy solutions runs into the realities of most disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration efforts. These include fear and grievance, often accompanied by the absence of a reasonably trustworthy authority capable of ensuring those disarming do not rejoin the fight. This authority should also be able to deliver a reasonable semblance of justice and keep the disarmed safe from retribution. These factors influence the decisions of those being asked to disarm as they understand that, absent this authority, disarmament can be a death sentence.
The Iraqi transition and reintegration experience shows why Hamas will not disarm unless it either experiences comprehensive defeat or sees a credible path to personal survival for its leaders and political relevance. Neither condition exists today, which means that calls for rapid demobilization rest on questionable assumptions rather than our recent experiences and the lessons of history.
To show this, I first describe how the Coalition Provisional Authority, the organization created by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 to administer Iraq until a government could be formed, designed the transition and reintegration program, why some factions participated while others refused, and how those choices and subsequent events shaped the decade of violence that followed. Second, I outline the similarities and differences between Iraq in 2004 and Gaza today, and what they reveal about Hamas’ incentives. Finally, I close by setting out the central requirement for any realistic plan to disarm Hamas: the creation of a governing authority and security structure capable of offering its members something other than fear.
The Coalition Provisional Authority Transition and Reintegration Program
The situation in Iraq in early 2004 had important structural and historical problems that would drive the outcomes yielding these lessons.
Structurally, the Coalition Provisional Authority established the Iraqi Governing Council to represent what it saw as the most important Iraqi groups in governance following the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. While conceived of as an inclusive body incorporating all key factions that could be permitted in the future governance of Iraq, the governing council had two major shortfalls: It excluded the major Shia faction headed by the Sadr family but included its rivals for Shia allegiance, the Hakims, and it had no solution for how to incorporate Sunni Iraqis who had benefited from Saddam’s rule but where not overtly complicit in its crimes. This had the effect of disenfranchising significant portions of Iraqi society and would contribute to the high levels of violence in the ensuing years. The situation created by these decisions was made worse due to bad actions committed by key Iraqi factions inside the governing council.
Historically, every Iraqi party represented in the governing council had suffered significant wrongs at the hands of other Iraqi factions. Party leaders feared each other and, in many cases, bore deep-seated grievances against others, such as the deaths of members of their families and friends at the hands of other parties.
These two groups of parties — those disenfranchised by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s choices and those in the governing council but fully aware of the potential for violence — and their willingness to participate in the transition and reintegration process illustrate well the challenges of demobilizing Hamas.
The theory behind transition and reintegration was that armed militias were the infrastructure for civil war and had to be disbanded for Iraq to evolve into a stable state. It was designed to transition these fighters into productive professions outside of their militias and sever the allegiances that held such militias together by eroding and eventually replacing those bonds with normal social ties and functions.
No one had illusions about the magnitude of the challenges. In 2004 and the years that followed, the political leaders of these factions needed their armed followers not only, as they thought, to attain political power (and to hunt down and kill those who had killed their kin — a not insignificant motivation), but for personal survival itself. Neither the emerging Iraqi governance and security structures nor the international coalition could secure society, as the following years of escalating violence demonstrated.
The transition and reintegration effort sought and obtained formal agreements with nine major political factions represented on the Iraqi Governing Council: the two major Kurdish political parties (the Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and their Peshmerga; three Shia parties (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its then-militia, the Badr Corps; Dawa; and Iraqi Hizballah) and their militias; Iraqi Hizballah; and two Sunni parties (the Iraqi Islamist Party — the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Iraqi Communist Party). Two other political parties, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Alliance, were initially involved but claimed to have no militias. However, the parties not represented on the governing council, the Sadrist party and the rising Sunni resistance — former Saddam-regime personnel, some of whom would morph into al-Qaeda in Iraq and later the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant — would not participate or even discuss the possibility of doing so. Why did one type of party participate and the other not? The answer provides insights for the problem of Hamas.
Similarities and Dissimilarities in Gaza
Iraq in 2004 had features similar to Gaza today, though was not identical. First, an external force entered and defeated the authoritarian and extremely violent faction that ruled the land. In Iraq’s case, it was the coalition forces led by the United States who overthrew Saddam, and in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces who sought to destroy Hamas. Unlike in Iraq, Hamas had long prepared to go underground to continue the fight, whereas Saddam’s government had not. Yet, the dispossessed and disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis eventually organized to resist. Like in Iraq, Hamas was the sole ruling party in Gaza — similar to the Saddamists in Iraq. But unlike in Iraq, there is no indigenous coalition of parties to replace Hamas. This, no doubt, affects Hamas’ vision of the possibility of a return to power, which in turn affects the group’s motivations.
In Iraq, former senior Saddamist leaders were declared criminals and they, as well as lower-level personnel, were hunted by their political enemies. They fought an insurgency to try to regain power but also because the threat to them and their families was existential. In Gaza, a similar dynamic exists. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put Hamas leaders on notice that they will be killed, it is probably not practical for Israel to hunt down all former Hamas rank-and-file. Furthermore, given the violence Hamas has used on its fellow Palestinians, they surely fear retribution should they disarm. Hamas’ public execution of members of the Doghmosh family, which has resisted Hamas, in October 2025 is evidence of Hamas’ acute fear of potential rivals and creates real motivations for these rivals to seek revenge. The bottom line is that in both places, the former rulers saw no path to political power, and they and many of their followers feared or currently fear for their lives. We should expect Hamas to be as unwilling to disarm as Saddam’s followers.
The Shia resistance in Iraq under Muqtada Sadr also shares similarities with Hamas. While not recently displaced from running the country, their grievances from being shut out of the Iraqi Governing Council — and a path to political power — were real. The Shia resistance shared a loathing for the remnants of the Baath party and were targeted by both coalition forces and Sunni extremists. They possessed a religious motivation to drive coalition forces from Iraq and sought power through violence. However, unlike Hamas in Gaza, the Shia resistance eventually saw a path to political power through the electoral process, which they participated in, and especially after coalition forces departed Iraq.
Radical Sunni extremists — al-Qaeda in Iraq and later Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant — were never going to cooperate with the Iraqi government or the United States. They insisted on absolute adherence to their theology and rule and were dedicated to not only fighting coalition forces, but also to exterminating Iraqi Shia. In this, they bear little resemblance to Hamas which — though extreme — is not so in this fanatical sense.
Unlike Iraq’s former Baath party leaders and the Sadrists, those in the governing council in 2004 could see a path to security and political power and therefore participated. They also realized that they would suffer enormously in a fight with the coalition forces should they opt for overt violence, as coalition forces had quickly achieved what they had struggled to do for decades and failed; defeat Saddam.
Months of negotiations and confidence-building measures were needed to get those militias willing to negotiate to agree to demobilize. Key elements of this were demonstrated respect for their histories and suffering under Saddam’s Baath party oppression; accommodations for their followers that would both provide for their welfare and ensure that the instruments of state violence could not be turned on them again; programs that cared for those who had fought Saddam and had been disabled and widowed; and allowances for their personal security (e.g., the ability to keep a core of armed followers to protect party leaders).
Also unlike the former Baath party leaders, at least until some of them merged with the Sunni jihadists groups, Hamas has both religious and nationalistic purposes. Some view themselves as doing the will of God and to turn away from their God is not permissible. For example, Yahya Sinwar — a former Hamas leader — saw the Oct. 7 attack as part of a divine plan to eliminate Israel. For those who truly believe this, death and suffering are preferable to capitulation. While Hamas is not as fanatical as the Islamic State and includes a major element of Palestinian nationalism, acquiescing to a secular Gaza government in coexistence with Israel is not something it could accept. Only defeat so comprehensive that they could see no path to power would permit Hamas to accept other outcomes. They do not see that as the case today.
Lessons and Challenges
From the Iraq case, we can glean important lessons. Primary among these is that militant groups that do not view themselves as defeated may be willing to peacefully transition into society if there is a reasonable path to political power and personal safety and if continuing to fight will be too costly (i.e., if the cost-benefit tradeoff of demobilizing is better than continuing to fight). If these groups do not see such a path or if their cost-benefit calculations indicate it is best to continue to fight, the chances of convincing them to demobilize and disarm are low and they can be expected to resist indefinitely.
This insight suggests either of two approaches can lead to successfully demobilizing and disarming Hamas: comprehensive defeat that makes resisting clearly impractical, or creating circumstances acceptable to all parties that Hamas views as preferable to continued conflict. Neither seems likely in the short term.
For the comprehensive defeat option to succeed, lessons from Iraq indicate that Hamas has to be sufficiently destroyed to be managed, and a legitimate political process and security forces have to be in place to permit Palestinians to govern themselves and adequately control violence. It is possible that the first of these conditions has been met — Hamas has been decimated — but without the political and security wherewithal to govern Gaza, Hamas will remain and will reemerge if it is permitted to do so. An alternate political and security order that Palestinians can accept could also make Hamas members understand that continued resistance is not necessary for personal survival, thus removing a major incentive to remain armed.
By its very nature, for the peace process option to succeed, Hamas leaders need to believe that they have a path to political relevance in Gaza — even if under a different guise and political system — and Israel needs to understand and accept this. Hamas leaders also need to believe that they will not be killed by either the Israel Defense Forces or their Palestinian enemies should they lay down their arms. This also requires a viable political order and competent security forces. This seems impossible in the short term and challenging in the long term.
Efforts in Gaza to date have pursued both approaches simultaneously. Israel Defense Forces efforts have sought to so thoroughly destroy Hamas as a functional organization that its remaining fighters would have to lay down their arms. Concurrently, various international players have sought to create conditions that would result in the disarmament of Hamas members, followed by exile or reintegration as individuals.
Neither approach has been successful. The Israel Defense Forces have made progress in degrading Hamas as a functional organization while failing to eliminate organized resistance. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan vision of a non-violent future has not been honored by either side. This is, at least in large part, because little progress has been made on creating a viable political order or the security forces to secure it — prerequisites for both options. While an international security force is forming, all indications are that it will have no interest in engaging Hamas in combat to disarm it, or in protecting its members.
Since both paths to successfully disarming Hamas require the ability to govern Gaza, impose a semblance of justice, and keep all parties relatively safe, creating such a governing authority with the ability to provide security is the most urgent task. While we know from hard experience that this is both difficult and time consuming, it is the linchpin that must be in place for peace to come to Gaza.
A Realistic Way Forward
U.S. leaders and negotiators should recognize that short-term prospects for real peace are dim and pushing for the creation of effective governance and security capabilities is essential for long-term success. While working with regional partners to create an international security force is a good first step, it is at best a bridge to a solution.
It is easy to describe challenges but hard to propose concrete solutions. Disarming Hamas likely requires making progress on solving Gaza’s problems, and those of the Palestinian people in general. Yet, solutions have proved elusive for almost 80 years. Seeking to create a few conditions and understanding mistakes to avoid could shape U.S. policy on Gaza. Characteristics of a viable approach include, first and foremost, disarming Hamas. The events of Oct. 7 were so horrendous that no Israeli government could ever accept it having a role in running Gaza — nor should the United States. Yet, this can only be done by the entity governing Gaza. Any viable approach will require working with Palestinian, regional, and other partners to understand what Palestinians could see as a legitimate government acceptable to other regional powers and developing plans and providing resources to work towards it. Understanding that this will be a long-term effort is also essential. Long-term commitments from regional partners and strategic patience are necessary. There will be no short-term solutions. Rather, the goal should be constant progress. Finally, it will be necessary to have realistic expectations. Success may grow out of a modus vivendi and incremental progress, rather than an imposed solution. It takes a long time to change political cultures, create functional governmental and security institutions, and change long-held beliefs.
An imposed solution is almost surely not possible in the near-term given the history of the region, but only a government viewed by Palestinians as legitimate has a chance to prevent the reemergence of Hamas or a replacement organization dedicated to the elimination of Israel, and a path towards peace.
A Historical Note
The discussion above about the transition and reintegration program in Iraq may have caused many to scratch their heads. Iraqi militias were active and devastating in Iraq throughout that decade and remain the powers behind many Iraqi political parties today. Yet, they did in fact sign agreements to reintegrate into society under the Coalition Provisional Authority. So, what happened?
When the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded in late June 2004, the agreements it had struck with the aforementioned militias were not honored by the U.S. Embassy in Iraq or coalition military forces. The embassy staff came on board that month determined to have “normal embassy operations” in Iraq, which meant it would treat Iraq as any other nation and so not exercise responsibility for its governance. This turned out to be a mistake and gave those militias that had signed agreements the opportunity to claim that the Coalition Provisional Authority law governing the transition and reintegration program (Coalition Provisional Authority Order 91) — which I authored with the legal staff at the Coalition Provisional Authority — permitted them to remain. In fact, it designated those militias that agreed to disband “residual elements” and allowed them to exist only while they went through the transition and reintegration process. This order and other laws made clear that if they did not uphold their commitments to transition and reintegration, they would be outlawed and targeted. Unfortunately, we had not thought to make provisions for the U.S. government, coalition military forces, and the nascent Iraqi government abandoning those agreements and processes.
When I returned to Iraq in February 2006 to stand up U.S. Embassy Baghdad’s Joint Strategic Planning and Analysis office, I discovered that the head of the Badr Corps (renamed the Badr Organization and now a separate political party), Hadi al-Amiri, had been claiming exactly that — that their militias were legal under Coalition Provisional Authority-era laws. His claim was accepted by Multi-National Forces — Iraq leadership. This in turn had allowed them to carry out violent suppression and assassination campaigns against their enemies, which would explode in 2006. By that time, the U.S. Embassy and Multi-National Forces — Iraq were again deeply involved in managing Iraq and violence was growing rapidly.
Terrence K. Kelly, Ph.D. is the founder and president of TKK Consulting, LLC, a member of the board of directors for Neo Networks Development, Inc., and an adjunct principal mathematician at the RAND Corporation. He is also a retired Army officer and former White House fellow.
Image: Rick Rzepka via DVIDS
