On October 10th, 2021, parliamentary elections were hold in the war-scarred country Iraq, the fifth since the US-led invasion and overthrow of ruler Saddam Hussein in 2003 that gave rise to a complex multi-party system characterized by opposing groups mainly defined by sect or ethnicity. This years’ elections were expected to be an answer to the most compelling issues that have been threatening the country’s post-2003 political order. Final results were claimed to be decisive for the country’s future and steep path to democracy as they were seen as a gateway to change for a nation where rampant dissatisfaction and turmoil have been commonplace for the past decades. This year’s low voter turnout, however, corroborated the already declining participation to elections of previous years, confirming people’s mistrust in the Iraqi political system to deliver democracy. Indeed, they recognised the difficulty of holing free and fair elections under current circumstances. Despite many Western countries’ view of parliamentary elections representing the fundamental mean for the country’s critical transition to democracy, the majority of Iraqis have little faith in a future transformation of the political system and feel that elections neither represent a channel for their voices nor an instrument for change.
The importance of the elections: Iraqi autumn of discontent
The relevance of this year’s elections was represented by the fact that they were held six months in advance to accommodate people’s request for an earlier vote, following dissatisfaction that spread across the country leading Iraqis in 2019 to mass anti-government protests. Discontent has been on the country’s agenda for a long time now, but the 2019 turmoil represented the largest and bloodiest since the US-led invasion in 2003. This does not come as a surprise given that, since the last elections in 2018, the political system has become more vicious. “Beyond the killings in protest squares, the system has developed mechanisms to thwart activists and civil society mobilizers before they mount demonstrations, with targeted assassinations, detention, torture, and intimidation of civil society and activists. The armed groups and militias kill in broad daylight, caught on CCTV cameras enjoying impunity for their work in protecting the political system” (Mansour, 2021). Even the UN intervened asking the government to cease repressing methods against protesters – which led to around 600 killings and tens of thousands of injuries – and pass electoral reforms and anti-corruption measures (BBC News, 2019).
Protests started on October 1st, 2019, when people took to the streets of Baghdad and in the south of the country to show their widespread anger against political leaders accused of having enriched themselves at the expense of the country. However, people demanded a radical change in the whole political system, not just the elimination of a party or a leader. They required an answer to wrecked public services and high unemployment rates, as well as an end to the endemic corruption and to foreign interference in the county’s political matters. This last request especially called out Iran as its influence over Iraq’s internal affairs grown increasingly since 2003, thereby participating in the country’s governance failure and corruption. Yet, the decision of Prime Minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, to dismissed Iraq’s popular counter-terrorism head at the end of September 2019 sparked so much outrage that his resignation was not enough to stop protesters from requiring a complete removal of the entire political establishment (Human Rights Office, 2019). Among other requests, the protestors asked for the creation of a new election law that would put an end to the wide-spread domination of already established political parties, as well as the enforcement of accountability and transparency through the revision of the judicial system (Haynes, 2019).
Demonstrators were calling for a fundamental overhaul of the muhasasa, an ethno-sectarian power-sharing structure enacted during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. They accused the system of having failed to safeguard Iraqi’s living standards despite the country’s vast oil reserves. A quota system that assigns seats to political parties based on sectarian and ethnic identification, fostering patronage and corruption, has allowed a small elite to maintain a tight hold on power at the expenses of the population. Especially young people felt betrayed by the state, thereby posing an increasing thereat to the latter. They condemned the state’s incapacity to regulate the job market, as the number of youths that entered the work force each year exceeded the state’s capacity to employ its citizens. This led more Iraqis to fall under the poverty line each year, and the political system came to face a severe and worsening legitimacy crisis. Against this background, even much-venerated religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is believed to have played a key role in defending Iraqi national interests since 2003, came under attack (Slim, 2019).
The cause of all governance problems is the political system’s instability and fragility, which stems from sectarian and ethnic quotas enacted after 2003. In 2005, the ruling parties were able to seize control of the political landscape, and have stayed in power to this day, albeit with varying degrees of dominance over time. Regardless of electoral outcome, the parties continued to fight in each election following the agreement of splitting the spoils and distributing high-ranked positions according to party quotas, which is achieved under the banner of a government of consensus. Even now, political opposition is rare, and these parties cooperate on the basis of serving and trading interests. As a consequence, state appointment is based on party service and obedience rather than administrative and professional expertise, and competence. This has hampered the hiring of qualified individuals and investments in their talents, as well as the country’s rebuilding and growth. Thus, through the arbitrary nomination of inept persons to high posts, the parties have been the architects of the breakdown of governmental institutions (Alaaldin, 2021).
The lack of expertise in state management among Iraqi officials, which is the primary reason of this the country’s political mismanagement, was also exacerbated by the fact that for decades, the exiled opposition parties were solely focused on resisting the old dictatorship and had no governing experience. Furthermore, most opposition members located in Western nations, did not work towards acquiring scientific, technical, or administrative skills. In spite of this lack, opposition leaders were placed in power and handed the keys of state administration when the authoritarian regime was deposed in 2003. At this point, instead of basing the establishment of the new governmental apparatus on ability and experience, all governmental structures were replaced with members of the ruling parties following the above-mentioned sectarian quota basis. As a result, all government institutions have crumbled due to a lack of administrative experience. The proof of this phenomenon can be seen in the failure of the administration to make any step forward in the fields of education, health, basic services, energy, industry, and agricultural ever since 2003. All major developments have been done in the pre-2003 period, and since then Baghdad and the cities of central and southern Iraq have become miserable to behold (Alaaldin, 2021).
Despite protests proceeding at a slow pace, demonstrations have continued sporadically throughout 2020. The COVID-19 epidemic heavily impacted on the economy as well as on all aspects of life, thereby clearly exacerbating the situation, and wreaking havoc on a country that has been reeling from a succession of splintering crises since 2003. The mixture of persecution and partial concessions, alongside the limitations imposed by the government to limit the COVID-19 epidemic, weakened the protestors’ determination by October 2020, without resolving their major complaints. Government pledges to provide justice to the families of those murdered in protests mostly went unmet, and parliamentarians rejected proposed reforms. More broadly, the government and its paramilitary entanglements have done nothing to repair the country’s significant legitimacy deficit since 2003. Thus, if the new government will not be able to solve the current situation, a new eruption of protests alongside repressing violence could only be a matter of time (Haynes, 2019).
Three are the main features of the 2019-2020 protest waves that are the reason why this year’s elections should be read as a warning for the Iraqi government to seriously start addressing national problems and to lift the nation out of the current state of crises. The revolt revealed a rare, but not unique, intra-Shiite schism. Contrarily to previous post-2003 violence in Iraq which mainly saw Sunnis against Shiites, Arabs against Kurds, or the government against insurgents as main opposing actors, recent clashes put a Shiite Islamist-led state apparatus against Baghdad’s mainly Shiite populace. A relevant role in the dynamics of the demonstrations was also played by Shiite political organizations, paramilitaries, and other armed groups that have long been at conflict, particularly Muqtada al-supporters Sadr’s and others under the Hashd banner, some of whom also received Iranian assistance (International Crises Group, 2021).
Foreign actors aggravated the impasse between demonstrators and security forces, with Iran siding with the government and the Hashd and the US backing the protesters and their right to peaceful protests. Iran has a strong interest in both the governmental system and the Hashd paramilitary organizations, as it had invested significantly in both. Many activists displayed anti-Iran views, which was responsible for the spreading of claims in government and Hashd circles that the US was orchestrating the upheaval (International Crises Group, 2021).
Iraq’s political establishment misjudged the power of the young people fuelling the rising mass movement, who were seen as a strong and independent political force that refused to negotiate a way out of the crisis to a large extent. In previous protests activists were typically linked to either the Sadrist movement or the Iraqi Communist Party. The Tishreen revolt, however, developed as a leaderless, youth-led grassroots movement, with the Sadrists siding with it at times and opposing it at others. The authorities were unable to enlist the help of the protestors or strike an agreement with them (International Crises Group, 2021).
Dissatisfaction towards the government is not recent
The tumult of 2019-2020 and, hence, the requests of the protests for a change in the incompetent and corrupted government did not arise out of the blue. The current upheavals are not the product of a burst of local “populism”, but the result of a decades-long accumulation of popular malcontent that has never been addressed with actual reforms but only with repressing governmental actions. Indeed, subsequent administrations have “responded to the unrest in ways consistent with the protesters’ critique: disjointedly and incoherently, at times offering olive branches but more often cracking down brutally on peaceful gatherings” (International Crises Group, 2021). Iraq has never witnessed a modern government that has sought successful economic growth, social development, and that met the larger demands of its citizens. Hence, current challenges aren’t short-term political concerns that can be resolved by changing its administration and reducing corruption. They are the result of profound sectarian and ethnic conflicts, as well as an almost constant state of war or crisis, dating from the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980 to the current day (Cordesman, 2019).
The disastrous situation in which the country finds itself is an intrinsic dysfunctions of the Iraqi society dating back decades. In fact, “the post-2003 state was dysfunctional from its inception, conceived in Pentagon corridors and bred on ideological precepts […] fortified with bags of cash. The result was corrupt, inept governance and the near-total absence of security during the U.S. occupation’s first months. Into the crevices stepped non-state actors – both insurgents seeking to overthrow the new order and militias striving to uphold it. The militias prevailed but, while lauded for stepping up to fight first al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS in their incarnation as Hashd paramilitaries, they frittered away the credit they had accumulated by mutating into predatory economic actors and enforcers of the status quo” (International Crises Group, 2021). In the aftermath of the fight with ISIS, the political system’s long-standing legitimacy issue became much more acute. Iraqis demonstrated their mistrust in the country’s political leadership by voting absentee in the 2018 elections, marking the lowest voter participation since 2005 at 44.5%. This left Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the new prime minister, in charge of a shaky coalition government as no political party earned an outright majority. As a result, the administration functioned more like a manager of ever-expanding patronage networks as it lacked cohesiveness and was unable to implement substantial reforms – even if it wanted to (International Crises Group, 2021).
This situation of instability has been aggravated through the years by Iran’s use of its clout in Iraq, as well as by the fact that the loss of the caliphate in Iraq hasn’t led neither to the end of the Islamic State (ISIS), terrorist acts and extremism, nor to ethnic and sectarian strife. Furthermore, the absence of a coordinated US effort to assist Iraq in dealing with the latter’s difficulties, properly rebuilding its armed forces, and making it strong enough to serve as a middleman between Iran and the rest of the Gulf has exacerbated the country’s structural issues. Although ties between the US and Iraqi militaries remained reasonably strong at a professional military level, the US appeared to lack a coherent overarching policy to cope with Iraq’s worsening political, governance, and economic condition, and to assist the country in any meaningful kind of national building. Thus, Iraq is displaying far too many symptoms of reverting to the degree of internal unrest that resulted in a low-level civil war in 2011 and the birth of ISIS – so Cordesman (2019).
For years the governing political elite not only appeared unable to deal with the country’s socio-economic crises, but also unconcerned about the consequences of the system’s impending collapse. Indeed, instead of dealing with the country’s numerous issues and preventing the harbingers of collapse, the political elite focussed on dividing up the leftover spoils. This led many experts to define Iraq as an equivalent of a failed state (Alaaldin, 2021). Against this background, the fact that the dissatisfactions of the 2019 protests were not without precedents but were a continuous of decades-long frustrations due to political incapability, emphasizes the importance of this year’s elections. Indeed, not only is the winning party required to address the current instable economic and social situation. It also has to rebuild a collapsed county where structural problems have been growing inside the state since decades, leading to the present day where they represent intrinsic and eradicated malfunctions of the Iraqi society.
Conclusion
Given the decades-long disastrous performance of the previous administrations and despite a long and sanguineous fight for change, Iraqis are not hopeful thar the result of the election will lead to a far-reaching change to a dysfunctional political system. Many doubt that their vote will matter.
People’s loss of faith in a better democratic future and in a competent political class was mirrored by the low voter turnout. Indeed, despite the supreme religious authority in Iraq encouraged voters to participate in elections as they “[…] are still the safest way for the country to cross into a future hopefully better than the past” (Al-Mikdam, 2021), the turnout only reached 41% of all eligible voters, topping the previous low of 44.5 % in 2018 (Al Jazeera, 2021). The result was attributed to the fact that ruling parties were likely to take the biggest share of the votes and that, therefore, the country’s system of dividing up government ministries among political parties along ethnic and sectarian lines would be upheld. Indeed, despite the new law that introduced the possibility to vote for a specific candidate – “to make politicians more accountable and reenergize an electoral process that has increasingly suffered from voter apathy and fraud” (Sherlock and Kaplow, 2021) – individual runners as well as newly established political parties were not expected to stand a great chance of winning. In fact, they do not have access to the same funds or power as the already-established parties. Moreover, electoral campaigns of new candidates have allegedly ben threatened and even experienced assassination attempts – so Sherlock and Kaplow.
Low turnout was also due to boycotts, mostly by young Iraqis who were convinced that participating in the election was useless given the current state of the county, the country’s struggle of uncontrolled weapons, and the influence of ideological and pro-Iran armed factions. Many claimed that elections have not been hold in a safe environment “with uncontrolled weapons everywhere” (Zahra, 2021). Instead, a large number of security forces has been deployed on election day, the majority of which being Shiite militias backed by neighbouring Iran.
In the medium term, the newly elected government and parliament should focus on proving wrong Iraqi’s loss of faith and develop a comprehensive reform plan that addresses the main economic and social incumbent problems, “with a priority on security sector reform, including training of riot police and streamlining of command and control within – and between – the interior ministry and the Hashd” (International Crises Group, 2021). In this way, if demonstrations erupt again, as they will if core complaints are not addressed, these steps will lessen the likelihood of another deadly clampdown.
However, people’s mistrust together with the long history of failed promises of previous governments and past examples of forming political alliances do not seem to promise a democratic and prosperous future. On top of this, the same political scenario is likely to be reproposed as Muqtada al-Sadr, who has already been the biggest winner of the 2018 elections with more 54 parliamentary seats, managed to increase his power by gaining a total of more than 70 seats. Although none of the competing political parties achieved majority in parliament on their own, al-Sadr’s bloc will be able to take a leading role in the political negotiations and, hence, have a great influence in the setting of the political agenda for the next four years. As it happened ever since 2003, elections will be followed by negotiations that can last months and only serve to distribute government posts among the dominant parties along ethnic and sectarian lines – thereby upholding the country’s detrimental political system (Loveluck and Salim, 2021). The main concern for present and future leaders will always be to compete with the aim of ensuring the country’s wealth for themselves and their allies. Accordingly, the future coalition is not expected to dramatically alter the balance of power in Iraq and Iraqis’ needs and rights will most likely fall into oblivion once more.
One more reason for believing that the current crisis and the socio-economic stall are likely to persist, is the loss of dozen of parliamentary seats of the pro-Iranian parties of the Fatah Alliance affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces – a parent organization of mostly pro-Iran Shiite militias. As already announced, these groups will appeal against the results and overturn the elections thereby opening the possibility for a military escalation (Al Jazeera, 2021). Although the Atabat and Sadrist militias back the Iraqi state’s military forces, enabling the latter to face the pro-Iranian losing parties, the government and the international community should not lower the guard but remain attentive to the possibility of future escalations (Dagher, 2021).
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By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
