Widespread suspicion of political chicanery plus record levels of unemployment, food shortages, a lack of water, and the direct involvement of a foreign power – these would add up to a toxic brew for any government. They are some of the problems facing the Iraqi regime, and as a result, the past few months of continuous public unrest and protest can scarcely have come as much of a surprise.
Current problems started immediately after Iraq’s parliamentary elections on 12 May 2018. There were immediate accusations of vote-rigging, and the results were so widely contested that on 6 June the newly-elected 329-seat parliament ordered a manual recount of the results. On 10 June a storage site holding about half of the ballot papers caught fire or was deliberately torched.
Allegations, denunciations and conspiracy theories filled the media. The speaker of the outgoing parliament, Salim al-Jabouri, claimed that the incident was “planned [and] deliberately intended to conceal cases of fraud and falsification of votes and to deceive the Iraqi people…”
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is heading a fragile caretaker government until the new government is formed, described the fire as a “plot” aimed at Iraq’s democracy, but a few days after the fire Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji claimed that the damage both to the warehouses and to the stored ballot papers had been minimal. All the same, the manual recount went ahead on 3 July. A month later the results were still awaited.
The parliamentary elections had thrown into prominence the issue of Iranian influence in the internal affairs of Iraq. The winning group, known as the “Sairoon Alliance”, was headed by Muqtada al-Sadr, often described as “the firebrand Shiite cleric”. He once led the Mahdi Army, an Iranian-supported force used to fight the United States during the Iraq war in the 2000s. After the elections, al-Sadr entered into a partnership with the group led by Hadi al-Amiri − the Fatah Alliance − an organization completely under Iran’s thumb.
Al-Abadi, who had relied heavily on US military support during his battles against Islamic State, headed a group called the Victory Alliance.
On 14 July electricity supplies in southern Iraq were suddenly cut off. Iran provides much of the region’s electricity and, when it was discovered that it was Iran that had cut the electricity, citing an unpaid bill of around $1 billion, popular discontent boiled over into street protests. Into the breach stepped the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al Sabah. He provided 17 mobile electric generators with a total capacity of 30,000 kilowatts to the southern port city of Basra, together with fuel to operate all the power stations in the country. Videos were circulated on social media showing a convoy of generators and fuel tankers heading into Iraq.
But nothing could stop the demonstrations, not government statements nor a crackdown by the security forces. In Baghdad, hundreds of people poured into Tahrir Square and the eastern Shiite district of Sadr City. When demonstrators broke into the offices of the Badr Organization – Hadi al-Amiri’s political headquarters − guards opened fire. This too did nothing to quell the increasingly violent protestors denouncing corruption and demanding water, electricity and jobs. In a bid to stamp out the protests of a population whipped into a fury by chronic shortages of basic services, authorities imposed a curfew and shut down the internet and social media.
“Water.” said one protester, caught on video at a demonstration in Basra city. “I’m demanding water. It’s a shame that I’m demanding water in 2018 and have oil that feeds the world.”
In the summer months, under regular temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius or more, Basra’s water supply, fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, always dwindles – a situation about which successive Iraqi governments have simply shrugged their shoulders. The Tigris and the Euphrates flow into the country through Turkey, and they join in Abadan in Iran. Iraq’s endemic water problem has been increased because storage facilities have been constructed by Turkey and Iran to draw off their waters. In recent decades the levels of the two rivers in Iraq have dropped by at least 40 percent.
The theme of Sunni discrimination is also picked up by the Saudi Gazette (Saudi Arabia), which, in a recent editorial takes the Iraqi PM to task for excluding “the country’s Sunni minority from power. His judicial pursuit of former Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi on charges of involvement in death squads could not have been better designed to alienate Sunni politicians. Ignoring the lessons that the U.S.-led coalition learnt to their own cost as well as the immense price in Iraqi blood, Maliki went out of his way to alienate important Sunni tribal leaders, who had once supported Al-Qaeda in the fight against occupation.”
Arab News’ (Saudi Arabia) Abdulrahman Rashed wonders whether Al Maliki is the victim of bad advice from some of his closest advisors, but then decides the prime minister must ultimately take responsibility for his own actions: “Is Al-Maliki the victim of his consultants? Some of his ministers say that Maliki’s advisers underestimated the gravity of the situation and encouraged him to involve the army without the local support of residents of provinces, which Al-Qaeda seized. Whether it’s his corrupt consultants or his convictions, arrogance and insolence, Al-Maliki is totally responsible for the security failure and the chaos threatening the country.”
The problem now is that, given the lack of credibility of the government and the lack of confidence in Mr. Maliki, few think that it will be an easy to claw back the territory controlled by the militants. A recent Gulf Today editorial puts it this way: “What is worrying is the inability of the Iraqi government to swiftly bring the situation under control. While Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s request to parliament to declare emergency rule makes sense, his suggestion that the government would provide weapons and equipment to citizens who volunteer to fight against militants is absolutely absurd and only exposes the weaknesses of the administration. A disturbing question that arises in one’s mind following Maliki’s suggestion is: If citizens are expected to protect themselves from militants, what is the role of the government and its security forces?”
But that begs the question, if not the government, then who? Will the United States step in? It seems unlikely, and if it does, not with the necessary force that is required to defeat the militants: “What is needed at this point of time is a coordinated effort from Iraq and its neighbors to push back this aggression. The million-dollar question is would the West, especially the United States, risk stepping into the quagmire of another civil strife that is sectarian in essence or keep looking the other way round as they did in the case of Syria? No rocket-science is required to find an answer, and Iraq has to gear itself up on its own for a full-fledged offensive against the militants.”
There are also those who agree with the recommendation advanced by the Oman Tribune staff in favor of a compromise between the government and the militants: “There is only one way out for Maliki if he wants Iraq to return to peace. That is by giving in to some of the demands of the insurgents. This means talks that will result in a meeting of minds after both sides make compromises on crucial issues. With the Kurds growling over the rights to the oil produced in their territory, the situation can deteriorate and Maliki can lose more ground in the weeks ahead....In the bargain, Iraq will face a grim future with the fears of many about a disintegration of the country becoming true. All right-thinking Iraqis would want to avoid such a situation but the ball is in the court of the prime minister.”
But Iraq is not the only loser here. What is taking place in Iraq is having and will continue to have important consequences for the region as well as for U.S. interests in the Middle East. Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ron Ben-Yishai is one of those who see the expansion of the ISIS in Iraq and Syria as bringing the “Middle East to the brink of chaos…. The complete route at Mosul is a humiliating blow to the Americans and President Barack Obama's policies. The city of Mosul and the Nineveh Province were the last part of Iraq the Americans took over in 2007. At the time, Washington claimed that it's seizure of Mosul paved the way for peace and democracy in Iraq....The takeover of Mosul is a blow not only for the government and parliament, which have a Shiite majority, but also a blow to Iran that backs the Shiite government in Iraq.”
In addition, Turkey’s Ilisu dam on the Tigris, some 20 years in the construction, was completed early in 2018. The filling was scheduled to start in March, but concern over water shortages in Iraq led to a delay of three months. By June Iraq’s water situation had deteriorated further, and an emergency session in Iraq’s parliament led to a second postponement while the two governments agreed a method of filling the dam which still allowed for a sufficient flow of the Tigris into Iraq.
By early July protesters in Basra, Iraq’s main oil-producing province, were targeting operations at key energy-sector facilities, demanding jobs and improved services. Following the killing of a protester on 8 July, up to 1,000 demonstrators attempted to block the road to the oil fields in the south. On 15 July al-Abadi, having sacked his Electricity Minister, announced the release of 3.5 trillion Iraqi dinars (around $2.5 billion) to Basra for water, electricity and health services. But by that time feelings were running too high to be placated, Powerful and influential religious figures like Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, were expressing solidarity with the protesters and declaring al-Abadi the source of Iraq’s many troubles.
This draining of political support, piled on the chaotic internal situation, could cost Abadi another term as prime minister, despite his widely acclaimed successes last year in leading the Iraqi government to victory over Islamic State and resisting a Kurdish bid for independence. If Abadi is forced from power following the election recount, Iran’s influence inside Iraq would be greatly enhanced and America’s much reduced. Not a prospect to be welcomed.
Eurasia Review