This generation opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime was born in a country where the totalitarian regime was well established (1970-2003) and where the Baath party controlled all of society, in its most intimate details. There, one man - Saddam Hussein - was considered the absolute reference and the incarnation of absolute truth. This generation’s dream was to install a liberal democracy, establish a civil society, and end a dictatorship. Exiled in Iran, Europe or the United States and involved in a military and diplomatic struggle against the Saddam Hussein regime, the members of this generation took control of the country in 2003, thanks to the United States occupation.
From their rise to power until today, this generation established a system marked by communitarianism, generalised corruption, classification of society, the militia-ization of the state, and co-governance.
Sectarianism
The sectarianism trend in power shifted to profit the Shia who have never governed the country nor been prepared towards this goal. According to an oral and empirical tradition that remains to this day, the heart of the Iraqi state is composed of 50% of seats for the Shia, 25% for the Sunni, 20% for the Kurds, and 5% for the minorities. In this configuration, the Iraqi national is not treated like a citizen but as a member of a community: Shia, Sunni, or Kurdish.
Widespread corruption
Corruption has become an integral part of the system and a phenomenon without precedent, placing Iraq amongst the most corrupt countries in the world. According to the president of the republic, from 2003 to 2021, of the thousand billion dollars made from oil, an estimated 150 billion dollars of “stolen money” has been smuggled out of the country. From 2003 to 2020, the impossible Iraqi state spent more than 62 billion dollars to improve the electricity sector and yet Iraqis have access to electricity only a few hours per day.
The systemisation of corruption and its generalisation is so massive and deep-rooted that Machan al-Joubouri, president of the anti-corruption committee, allowed himself to comment in 2017: “There is nothing to do. Nothing will change. Fighting corruption is like fighting against the impossible. If today, I give you the exact numbers and the names of involved personalities in this corruption scheme, tomorrow I will be dead. I am sorry but this is our reality.”
The categorisation of society
Social inequality is clearly not a new phenomenon in Iraq. Nonetheless, it is accepted that from 2003 onwards, new social classes that were born out of corruption, emerged simultaneously in the Shia south, Sunni centre and the Kurdish north.
This is how, at the top of society, a homogenous class similar to an oligarchy, shaped itself. This oligarchy manifests itself through various practices:
- By place of residence: villas sold for an average price of 700 000 dollars within villages constructed recently on the European model and closed to the public.
- By transportation: large Land Cruiser all-terrain vehicles are acquired for around 150 000 dollars.
- By education: their children are enrolled in private anglophone schools where teachers hail from the United States and the United Kingdom.
- By culture and sport: private facilities are reserved for wealthy families - libraries, cinemas, theatres, museums, swimming pools, football stadiums, fitness centres...
- By professional careers: the members of this oligarchy are often top-ranking actors, members of political office, members of the general directorate of the party, ministers, members of parliament, business leaders…
At the bottom of society, we find a relatively homogenous social level that can be characterised by realities that are the exact opposite of those from this new oligarchy:
- Places of residences with deteriorated dwellings that offer only a few hours of electricity per day and no air-conditioning in a country where temperatures often exceed 45 degrees in the shade.
- Transport services with deteriorated buses, or in some cases, second-hand cars.
- An education from disadvantaged public schools for kids who, with some exceptions, will never go to an Anglo-Saxon university, but who will instead, for the most fortunate, stay in a university where the diploma is far from being a guarantee of their professional career, while others will be left to fend for themselves in the streets.
- Cultural practices with a reduced number of public libraries.
- Sport practices on football fields deprived of services and poorly maintained swimming pools in working-class clubs.
- Citizens who can hardly hope for another career than one of a local government employee or blue-collar worker, but instead often find themselves unemployed without compensation.
The militia-ization of the state
Since 2014, the Iraqi state has recognised the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) that unites approximately 75 militia organisations. Their numbers vary regularly as some groups disappear and others appear, hence the difficulty of determining a reliable figure. They fluctuate between 60 and 75 organisations. In 2021, the Iraqi state dedicated 2.6 billion dollars for them, which is equal to the combined budget of these five ministries: agriculture, industry, transport, water resources, and communication.
Indeed, from its arrival in the country in 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority directed by Paul Bremer, emptied the country of all institutions that possessed almost a century’s worth of state governance. It is precisely from this ‘purification’ of Iraqi society that Paul Bremer began to lay the first foundations of the reconstruction of the Iraqi state. This rebuilding was undertaken for a large part through the integration of militias that had formerly been opposed to Saddam Hussein’s regime. With the insistence of the United States, the militias became the backbone of the post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi state.
Consequently, we do not approach the question of the militias in Iraq through the prism of the ‘deep state’, the ‘invisible hand’ nor ‘the third party’ because we believe that the militias were at the heart of reconstruction of the Iraqi state by the Americans from 2003. The militia organisations are not outside of the state. On the contrary they possess the state, they are the state.
Co-governance
Without a solid base and emptied by America and Iran of all its civil servants with state governance knowledge, Iraq is thus under the supervision of a co-governance elaborated by Washington and Tehran. Admittedly, on the 28th of June 2004, the United States officially handed back control to an Iraqi government led by Ayad Allawi, one of the opponents of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The same day, Paul Bremer, the American administrator of Iraq, left the country. Nonetheless, this Iraqi independence is only symbolic, as behind the scenes the country is indirectly governed by a concord between American diplomats and Iranian Ayatollahs. Thanks to this agreement, the president of the republic, the prime minister and the president of the parliament can be appointed.
In the 1920s, Henry Dobbs, the British high commissioner in Iraq, made a direct link between the British mandate and the existence of Iraq as a state. One century later, it is highly likely that the Iraqi state finds itself in the same configuration, as a destabilisation of this partnership between the two powers would possibly put the country in front of existential problems that might even lead to its implosion. Yet, the strategy followed by these two actors since 2003 is one of territorial unity for Iraq. They both massively intervened in 2014 to save this ‘unity’ from the threat the Mosul-installed caliphate represented, but also in 2017, when Kurds voted in favour of the independence of Kurdistan. However, it must be acknowledged that since the assassination by the Americans of Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s strong man in the Middle East, on Iraqi soil on the 3rd of January 2020, we have transitioned from a state of concord to discord between the two capitals, which block the functioning of the already profoundly fragile Iraqi state.
The time for assessment is now
Today, it must be acknowledged that the political system put together by this post-Saddam Hussein generation of leaders, has completely broken down. The country is in a very serious situation: its existence and durability are seriously questioned. Between April and October 2021, I travelled to Iraq multiple times and met with leaders of the political elite. During this year, I conducted with my team multiple research projects on the country, hundreds of hours of testimonies were analysed. The result is that all the fringes of Iraqi society contemplate tragic scenarios. It is only rarely, not to say never, that we find people who are optimistic. These Iraqis that go through living hell, day after day in their country, believe that the worst lies ahead and that the creation of a contestation movement, the requests for a ‘homeland’, a ‘country’ or a ‘state’ are totally in vain because the objective reasons for this Iraqi failure lie a lot deeper. Except through a miracle from the Iraqi elites with international powers, which is highly unlikely in the current circumstances, the country will not be saved.
Adel Bakawan is director of the Centre Français de Recherche sur l'Irak (CFRI, French Centre for Research on Iraq).
