Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi appointed former Minister of Interior Qassem Al-Araji as an adviser to the National Security Agency to succeed the head of the Popular Mobilization Authority Faleh Al-Fayyad, who had been operating since 2014, and appointed the Commander of the Counter-Terrorism Service Lieutenant-General Abdul-Ghani as the head of the agency that was also occupied by Al-Fayyad.
The National Security Adviser is directly linked to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and is responsible for providing security and military consultations, while the National Security Agency is an institution independent of the Ministry of Defense and the Interior and works alongside Ministry of Interior forces to control internal security.
Retired Staff Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani Al-Asadi, head of the Iraqi National Security Service 🇮🇶 pic.twitter.com/vMCPnGwACV
- Sumeri # 313 (@ Su90M_313) July 4, 2020
# Urgent
assigning "Qasim Al-Araji" as a consultant to National Security pic.twitter.com/BuoX6Muhg0
- Fallujah Al-Hadath (@ndhadth) July 4, 2020
Al-Kazemi had earlier returned Lieutenant General Abdul-Wahab Al-Saadi to the Counter-Terrorism Department and appointed him head of the agency after his promotion, after he was transferred, by order of former Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi, to the administration, a move that meant freezing it.
Al-Kazemi had previously chosen two military figures to run the Ministries of Interior and Defense, Osman Al-Ghanmi and Juma'a Anad, two of the most prominent senior officers in the stage of the war against the Islamic State, and Major General Qasim Muhammad al-Muhammadi was assigned the position of commander of the ground forces, and was preceded by the appointment of Brigadier Yahya Rasul speaking as Officially on behalf of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
Border outlets
In another development, a spokesman for the Iraqi Border Ports Authority, Alaa al-Qaisi, denied that any armed factions had taken control of the border post in the western Anbar province.
Al-Qaisi told Al Jazeera that the port is still under the control of the federal government, and that it will not allow any party to control it.
And local and security sources said that an armed force from the elements of the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades had deployed at the Al-Qaim border crossing with Syria and tightened its control over it by force.
The sources added that members of this force beat some workers.
These developments came two days after the withdrawal of a force from the Iraqi counter-terrorism agency that had deployed at the crossing on the orders of Al-Kazemi, who had pledged to restore all border crossings.