A litmus test for Iraqi global democracy

On April 30, Iraqis went to the polls to choose a new government for the fourth time in a decade. While every Iraqi election has been important, none has been as consequential as this one. Not only do resurgent terrorism, sectarian tension, and the threat of a spill over of violence from Syria put Iraq on the security precipice, the election brought long deferred issues to the fore. 

As Iraqi politicians and parties form the new government, they will not only choose a new prime minister (or return Nouri al-Maliki to the post), but also seek to resolve questions regarding the meaning of federalism, the institutionalism of confessionalism in which certain ethnic or sectarian groups reserve a claim to specific positions within government, and perhaps even the utility of Iraqi democracy.

Democracy over the Years

Successful national elections in 2005 raised some optimism. While insurgency was very much there at that time, more than 58 percent of Iraqis voted in the January 30, 2005 polls to select a provisional government to draft a constitution. The vote marked Iraq’s first free elections in at least half a century. 

Ten months later, nearly two-thirds of eligible Iraqis overwhelmingly endorsed a new constitution in a referendum. While Iraqis celebrated their new constitution, the document left key issues unresolved. It provided contradictory direction with regard to the role of religion in politics; deferred resolution to the status of Kirkuk to a referendum, which has never been held; and outlined the structure of a council of the regions which would, if implemented, create a bicameral legislature rather than the current unicameral one. 

With the resolution of such issues at stake as well as Iraq’s economic recovery and negotiations to end foreign occupation, nearly 80 percent of eligible Iraqis voted in December 2005, an election which ultimately brought long time Dawa Party activist Nouri al-Maliki to the premiership. Huge election turnout, however, masked uneven participation as insurgent violence and a Sunni boycott suppressed the vote in largely Sunni Arab provinces like al-Anbar, Ninewa, and Salahuddin governorates. Maliki may have been prime minister, but his mandate, at best, was limited.

The March 2010 elections did little to consolidate Maliki’s mandate. Secularist Ayad Allawi’s al-Iraqiyya won a plurality. Despite Allawi’s popularity among Iraq’s Arab neighbours, Turkey, and among the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, many Iraqis saw him as too polarising. His willingness to forgive and rehabilitate his former Baathist colleagues antagonised many Iraqis. 

Iranian officials didn’t trust Allawi and lobbied overtly against him among Kurds and Iraqi Shi’ites, two communities in which Iran enjoys paramount influence. With Allawi winning but unable to forge a coalition, President Jalal Talabani asked Maliki to form a government.

Maliki at the Helm 

Maliki may have won election, but for many Iraqis, his victory was Pyrrhic. Perhaps they could forgive the Prime Minister for seeking to consolidate power: The United States left Iraq with a dysfunctional system – one subsequently enshrined in the new constitution – which saddled the Premier with ministers loyal not to him, but to often antagonistic power brokers from other coalition partners. 

The Prime Minister cannot fire insubordinate ministers without risking the collapse of the government. Rather than risk stalemate or his government’s existence, Maliki embarked on a two-pronged strategy: He took for himself key portfolios – the Interior Ministry, National Security Affairs Ministry and, for some time, the Defence Ministry. He also created a parallel set of advisors who acted as shadow ministers, albeit more empowered than the actual ones. Maliki applied the same strategy towards the security forces: whatever the institution’s power and chain-of-command on paper, Maliki grew increasingly reliant on a small unit of politically reliable troops loyal to him personally. 

To Maliki’s opponents, such actions confirmed the narrative that Maliki seeks to return Iraq to dictatorship. This is unfair. Faced with the structural impediments of a dysfunctional government, any prime minister – including all those positioned to succeed Maliki – would adopt the same strategy to govern; the alternative would be gridlock and rapid state failure. 

While Maliki’s style might grate on opponents, the allegations that he has become a new Saddam are inaccurate. Few authoritarians face election in which their victory is not assured, nor do Iraqis see Maliki’s portrait plastered across public spaces. 

Systemic Issues

That said, even having consolidated power, Maliki failed to address systemic issues hampering Iraq’s recovery. Nepotism and corruption remain rampant. A lack of legislation outlining conflicts of interest means that many politicians – Maliki included – benefit privately from public policies they implement. 

Often, senior politicians utilise their sons as business agents. Ahmad Maliki, for example, conducts business on behalf of his father. Masour Barzani, likewise, negotiates business deals on behalf of Kurdistan Regional President Masoud Barzani. Hero Ibrahim Ahmad, wife of ailing Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, has amassed interests reportedly amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars by trading on her husband’s power. 

Few Iraqi politicians – even those like former Iraqi planning minister and former Kurdistan Prime Minister Barham Salih often considered ‘clean’ by Western officials – do not dabble in business that in both India and the United States would be scandalous.

Nor has Maliki placed Iraq on a secure economic footing. He has used the recovery of Iraq’s oil sector to subsidise a bloated bureaucracy. Parliamentarians, even from within Maliki’s own party, privately say that there is not a single ministry that could not operate as well, if not better, with one-tenth of the personnel. While such a strategy provides stability (and enables patronage) as long as the price of oil is high, it could be disastrous should the price of oil decline precipitously, as it might with new international sources of oil and gas coming to market within a decade. 

The perception of Maliki’s close relation to Iran also breeds frustration, since many Iraqis – including Shi’ites – resent Iran’s dumping of cheap manufactured goods into Iraq, a phenomenon which undercuts almost all of Iraq’s non-oil industries.

Sectarian Challenges

Sectarianism continues to dominate Iraqi politics, even if its influence is exaggerated. Critics fault Maliki for targeting Sunni political opponents such as former Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and former Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi. 

While Maliki may have allowed politics to influence the timing of arrest warrants against both men, the charges against both arose from within their own sectarian communities and were signed off by a cross-sectarian array of judges. 

Seeking the arrest of Hashemi and Issawi, while others like Shi’ite firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remain free, suggest selective prosecution. Likewise, while Sunnis embracing al-Qaeda did participate in the al-Anbar protest movement according to numerous videos taken over months, politics seems to have influenced the timing of Maliki’s decision to raid the protest camps. His aim is to rally Shi’ites who otherwise might turn to Ammar al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) or even Muqtada al-Sadr as an alternative. 

ISCI, the Sadrists, and other Shi’ites will continue to challenge Maliki, even as Maliki won the most votes in the 2014 elections. Here, the case of former Basra Governor Khalaf Abdul Samad is instructive. Elected to office in 2011, Abdul Samad, like Maliki a Dawa member, won plaudits across the political spectrum for his management of Basra and public works projects. 

Despite being the top vote getter in the 2013 provincial elections in Basra, ISCI and the Sadrists formed an uneasy alliance to oust him. In theory, should ISCI strike a bargain with Kurdish and Sunni Arab parties, they could form an anti-Maliki coalition in which a weaker Shi’ite compromise candidate like Ahmad Chalabi or Adil Abdul Mahdi could take the premiership. 

Three Factors

The success of an anti-Maliki coalition depends on three factors: The first is a willingness by Shi’ite religious leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to refrain from demanding Shi’ite unity, and the second is that ISCI manages to outbid Maliki on incentives to win the Kurds. 

In addition to Iraq’s presidency, the Kurds will demand concession on Kirkuk and other disputed territories, as well as Baghdad accepting the Kurds’ proposed oil law. While Sunni Arabs cannot expect to win as much as the Kurds, they will seek to leverage their votes into concessions on revenue, investment, and perhaps autonomy. 

The third factor is Iran’s approval. While Iraqis tend to resent Iran’s overbearing behaviour, the withdrawal of American forces coupled with Iran’s willingness to play hardball gives Tehran disproportionate influence to approve or scuttle coalition agreements. Not only Shi’ites but also nominal American allies like Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party seek Iranian counsel and defer to Tehran’s demands. American influence still matters but not to the extent it did during the coalition building that followed each previous election. 

Elections mark the beginning of a long process that could take months – or years – to resolve. When Maliki or an alternative succeeds in forming the new government, Iraq will slowly stabilise. Should negotiations resolve long deferred debates, then Iraq might actually strengthen. The real danger, however, is that a political stalemate will prevent even that. This is the nightmare scenario, for the failure to form a new government could both de-legitimise Maliki’s further rule while creating a vacuum which could see ethnic and sectarian groups seek to win by assassination or on the battlefield what they fail to achieve in the post-poll negotiation.