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STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 24 (IPS) – Over the previous 20 years Iraq has been affected by a number of waves of intense battle and violence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the USA and United Kingdom toppled the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.
It additionally ushered in years of chaos and civil conflict, as quite a lot of armed teams vied for energy and territory and focused coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Military.
A interval of relative calm within the early 2010s was damaged by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied giant components of the nation from 2014 till it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the assist of a US-led worldwide coalition in 2017.
At this time Iraq is having fun with its most secure interval since 2003. Armed violence persists in numerous varieties, however it’s sporadic, fragmented and localized. Nonetheless, the nation stays fragile and divided, and its individuals face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to deal with. This Topical Backgrounder goals to supply a snapshot of the state of affairs in Iraq 20 years for the reason that invasion.
A fragile, oil-dependent economic system
Crude oil exports accounted for an estimated 95 per cent of federal revenues in 2020. Successive governments have completed little to wean Iraq off this heavy dependency on oil rents and diversify the economic system. This has led to a bloated public sector characterised by patronage and to a scarcity of jobs for brand spanking new graduates—particularly these with out the mandatory connections and networks.
The dependency on oil rents additionally exposes the Iraqi economic system to fluctuations in world oil costs. Not solely does this make long-term growth planning tough, however in 2020, when world oil costs plunged, the federal government was left unable to fund primary providers and even pay public-sector salaries and pensions.
Public debt reached 84 per cent of gross home product (GDP), and GDP itself fell 16 per cent, inflaming anger on the authorities. Though oil costs shortly recovered, two years of authorities paralysis and political turmoil have made it tough for Iraq to take benefit and make investments the elevated revenues.
Regardless of having giant pure gasoline reserves, Iraq at the moment depends on gasoline imports from Iran. The US and Iraq’s European companions are eager to finish this dependency and to assist Iraq turn into energy-independent.
Nonetheless, the political and financial turmoil of the previous few years in Iraq have stalled funding in capability to separate and course of gasoline from Iraqi oil fields, and as a substitute huge portions of gasoline related to oil extraction are flared off.
This leaves Iraq nonetheless depending on Iranian gasoline and electrical energy imports, drastically will increase its local weather footprint and creates acute air air pollution in components of the nation. The state of affairs is a major illustration of the complexity of Iraq’s safety challenges and governance failures, which work together in complicated methods with its oil-dependent economic system, tumultuous regional dynamics and environmental points.
The altering face of armed violence
At this time, Islamic State is considered unable to recruit extra members in Iraq and solely an estimated 500 fighters are nonetheless energetic within the nation. Main army operations in opposition to Islamic State have thus ended.
In 2020, the US started lowering its army footprint in Iraq—which had risen sharply in response to the rise of Islamic State—and solely round 2500 US army personnel stay within the nation, at Iraq’s invitation, in an advisory function.
A key activity because the menace from Islamic State dissipates is to take care of the Widespread Mobilization Forces (an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella group comprising quite a few predominantly Shia militias, some supported by Iran) in addition to smaller militia teams linked to ethno-religious minorities within the nation’s north that have been shaped within the title of group self-defence.
One of many targets of successive Iraqi governments has been integrating these forces into the Iraqi safety forces, however progress has been sluggish. Many of the militias are nominally underneath the Ministry of Defence.
Nonetheless, many appear to behave independently of presidency and out of doors institutional jurisdiction. Some have been accused of human rights violations and abuses in opposition to civilians, significantly in the course of the mass anti-government protests in 2019.
One other activity, being urged by the US and the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to enhance how the Peshmerga—the armed forces of the Kurdistan Area of Iraq (KRI)—and the Iraqi Armed Forces work together.
A scarcity of coordination and intelligence-sharing has undermined the effectivity of safety operations, significantly within the disputed territories of Iraq. Previous to the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Authorities (KRG) and the federal authorities in Baghdad have been collectively administering safety in these territories.
Iraq has additionally suffered from the spillover of civil conflicts and counterinsurgency in neighbouring nations, particularly in a few of its extra distant areas. Iran and Türkiye have each launched missile strikes or armed incursions in opposition to opposition forces on Iraqi territory in recent times.
Id politics and worsening state-society relations
America and different members of the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and supported its transition to post-Ba’athist democracy lacked a long-term imaginative and prescient. They typically did not anticipate the implications of main selections, such because the disbanding of the Iraqi Military in 2003 or a number of initiatives put ahead by the transitional authorities.
Some of the consequential of those initiatives was the institution of Muhasasa Ta’ifia, a type of consociationalist elite cut price that was adopted after 2005. Beneath Muhasasa Ta’ifia, authorities posts, sinecures and departments are shared out among the many Kurdish, Shia and Sunni political elites after an election—typically after quite a lot of fraught inter-factional horse-trading.
Voters are supplied a alternative of events inside a given ethnosectarian bloc, however no alternative of coverage platforms. There isn’t any parliamentary opposition to carry the federal government accountable.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia was conceived as a method to cease Iraq fracturing and divisions alongside the main ethnosectarian faultlines, to encourage the teams to collaborate and to keep away from one group turning into too dominant. Whereas it has arguably succeeded to an extent in these goals, it has additionally given rise to ineffective governments, lack of accountability, and a public sector rife with corruption and patronage.
Because of this, a significant new faultline has emerged, with bizarre residents united throughout ethnosectarian traces by grievances in opposition to the governing class. Together with corruption, residents complain of financial mismanagement, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, weak public providers and extra. Largely youth-led anti-government protests in 2019 expressed their emotions of alienation from the political elite with the slogan ‘We wish a homeland’.
Mass protest has been rising since 2015. The October Protest or Tishreen Motion that started in 2019 was giant sufficient to topple the federal government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in early 2020 and was violently suppressed by state forces and militias.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia prompted one other political disaster in 2021–22 when elites have been unable to agree on a brand new authorities for over a yr after a normal election in October 2021. Voter turnout in that election fell to a file low of 44 per cent, illustrating the rising in style disillusionment and frustration with the political system.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia appears unlikely to alter within the close to time period, however there are some indicators that it’s slowly breaking down, and even perhaps beginning to make method for a extra issue-based politics. For instance, political factions have just lately been forming alliances past their ethno-sectarian blocs.
Following the 2021 election, Muqtada al-Sadr, the chief of the Shia Sadrist motion, proposed forming a majority authorities with a sizeable parliamentary opposition—though this was rejected by different factions.
Extra positively, the Tishreen Motion spawned its personal political candidates, a few of whom gained seats. Their potential to affect federal politics is negligible, however they can push ahead change in subnational politics.
The Kurdistan Area in federal Iraq
The Kurdistan Regional Authorities has a peaceable, if sometimes fraught, relationship with the federal authorities in Baghdad. The KRG enjoys a excessive stage of autonomy, which incorporates sustaining its personal army forces, the Peshmerga.
Early on within the transition course of after 2003, Kurdistan was acknowledged as Iraq’s most secure area, and its leaders as having invaluable expertise of presidency that the opposite transitional authorities lacked. This was additionally partly as a result of no-fly zone and different measures to guard the Iraqi Kurds from Iraqi authorities assaults carried out by the USA and European companions after the primary Gulf Battle in 1991.
The Kurds in Iraq have largely distanced themselves from the Kurdish independence actions in neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey, to the extent that Peshmerga forces have even clashed with Turkey’s Kurdish Staff’ Occasion (PKK) forces working on Iraqi soil.
Relations between the KRG and the federal authorities are sophisticated by long-standing disagreements over oil income sharing and management of the disputed territories, which embrace the oil-rich metropolis of Kirkuk. The KRG introduced these territories underneath its management after Iraqi safety forces withdrew within the face of Islamic State advances in 2014. Resolving the standing of the disputed territories ought to have taken place a decade earlier, in line with the 2005 structure.
When the main army operations to defeat Islamic State got here to an finish in 2017, tensions between the federal authorities and the KRG have been intensified by the KRG’s push for better autonomy. The KRG organized a referendum for independence that additionally included the disputed territories that have been then underneath its management (together with Kirkuk).
The federal authorities rejected the referendum and retook the disputed territories with army drive, supported by the Widespread Mobilization Forces, and carried out different punitive measures in opposition to the KRG.
The KRG and state-society relations within the KRI have comparable issues to these discovered on the federal stage. The KRG price range depends closely on impartial oil exports and on price range transfers from Baghdad, eradicating the inducement to diversify the economic system. And the 2 most important Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Occasion and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have been in a power-sharing settlement for the reason that unification of two Iraqi Kurdish enclaves in 2006.
This settlement sees authorities and administrative posts shared between the 2 events—an association not dissimilar to Iraq’s Muhasasa Ta’ifia. As in the remainder of Iraq, residents of the KRI complain of corruption, patronage and mismanagement by the Kurdish authorities. Many have left Iraq to search asylum in Europe and elsewhere.
Relations with Iran and the US
Within the area of diplomacy, Iraq’s strongest relationships and ties are with Iran and the US. Nonetheless, Iraq has sought to diversify its diplomatic and financial relations in recent times, together with with Arab Gulf states in addition to Egypt and Jordan.
Iran is Iraq’s largest buying and selling accomplice, though Iraq’s imports from Iran—price round $9 billion in 2018—vastly outweigh commerce within the different path. Iraq and Iran have additionally cooperated extensively within the struggle in opposition to Islamic State.
Iran’s affect in Iraq, a lot of it exercised by way of Shia political factions, has been a supply of anger amongst protesters, particularly as Iranian-backed militia teams have been concerned in violence in opposition to anti-government protests.
Along with having guided the post-invasion political transition, the USA stays Iraq’s most important supply of safety assist and of army and growth help. The USA has just lately elevated stress on Iraq for tighter management of greenback gross sales so as to stamp out potential cash laundering that advantages Iran and Syria.
Steps taken to do that contributed to a big drop within the greenback worth of the Iraqi dinar, resulting in hovering inflation in early 2023 and the alternative of the central financial institution governor.
Iraq has been caught in the course of regional tensions, significantly as a consequence of its diplomatic and geographic closeness to Iran. In recent times Iraq has tried to take an energetic function in resolving these tensions. For instance, with French assist Iraq has organized two regional summits—one in Baghdad the opposite in Amman, Jordan—aimed toward de-escalating regional tensions. In 2021 Iraq hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a prelude to the China-brokered détente introduced in March 2023.
The state of affairs for Iraq’s minorities
State failure to guard Iraq’s many ethno-religious minorities is a long-standing downside. Since 2003, many minorities have been displaced as a consequence of insecurity, typically migrating to the KRI—which was seen as calmer, safer and extra tolerant—and in lots of instances out of Iraq altogether.
The Islamic State group focused minorities, significantly these of non-Abrahamic faiths. The worst of this was in Nineveh Province, recognized for its mosaic of ethnic and spiritual range. The Islamic State assaults on the Yezidi group in Sinjar district have been so devastating that they’ve been acknowledged as a genocide.
Lots of the minorities who have been displaced in the course of the Islamic State occupation haven’t returned—partly right down to the presence of the various militias nonetheless energetic of their areas of origin and a normal sense of insecurity, but additionally as a result of they really feel they’ll make a greater life of their new houses.
A UN-brokered settlement between the KRG and the federal authorities in 2021 that was aimed toward normalizing the safety state of affairs in Sinjar has had little impact on the bottom that may encourage the internally displaced Yezidis to return.
Though minority residents in Iraq are experiencing decrease ranges of armed violence based mostly on their identification, discrimination in opposition to them appears to have worsened within the wake of the Islamic State occupation. SIPRI has been working within the Nineveh Plains area on methods to enhance intercommunal relations and assist minorities to re-establish their cultural practices and social relations.
A number of civil society and grassroots teams are pushing for a reimagining of Iraq, the place ethnicity and sect play a a lot smaller function. Nonetheless, Iraq’s highly effective political blocs are eager to take care of the present power-sharing association, though it doesn’t appear prone to convey prosperity or lasting peace.
The legacy of the invasion nonetheless runs by way of most of the challenges that Iraq faces, however not defines them. Progressively, Iraq is shaping its personal future—hopefully to the good thing about all its residents.
Learn extra about SIPRI’s bundle of interviews, opinion items and reference supplies to mark the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
Shivan Fazil is a Researcher with the Center East and North Africa Programme on the Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute (SIPRI). Dr Alaa Tartir is a Senior Researcher and Director of SIPRI’s Center East and North Africa Programme.
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