Baghdad reform ‘difficult and problematic’: official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The chairman of Iraq’s Advisory Council has warned that reform will be difficult in the current political environment, saying America is responsible for Iraq’s difficulties in an interview with Rudaw.

“Reform is difficult and problematic for the country, as it’s deemed unacceptable by political sectors that depend on the ongoing corruption,” Farhad Alaaldin said in an interview with Rudaw’s Mohammed Sheikh Fatih on Tuesday.

“America is responsible for Iraq’s situation now. As the English people say, you break it, you own it. The situation that has been created in Iraq is the result of America’s politics in Iraq over the last 15 years,” Alaaldin said during the interview.

His comments followed a Foreign Policy article published on Monday, warning that widespread protests will resume across Iraq if the country’s economic woes are not addressed.

“It would be challenging for the government to keep order if salaries were not being paid and the prime minister lacked authority,” Alaaldin wrote with author and scholar Kenneth Pollack.

“A financial crisis would almost certainly spark widespread street demonstrations, with Iraqis once again demanding a change of government,” they said, adding that “Iraq could easily slide back into intercommunal civil war.” 

“Even the Kurdistan Region will not be safe from internal economic troubles unless it can expand its resource base, because it, too, is financially dependent on Baghdad.”

Iraq is struggling to pay its civil servants as the country has plunged deeper into an economic crisis caused by low oil prices, delaying public sector salaries and causing frustration among civil servants who largely depend on public salaries.

The crisis will flare up conflict further between Baghdad and Erbil, as well as Shiite militias backed by Iran as they will try to fight for territory to control, control of revenue-generating oil fields, border crossings, private properties, agricultural land, large business and ports, added Alaaldin and Pollack.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Iraq had been rocked by months of protests as overwhelmingly young crowds demanded jobs, services, and action against corruption.

By the end of November last year, former Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi had resigned after mounting pressures from protesters and an official call from Iraq's highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

At least 600 protesters and members of the security forces were killed and more than 18,000 injured in the protests in October last year, according to human rights monitor Amnesty International. 

Iraq’s newly-inaugurated Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi told journalists in June that Iraq has failed to develop a “real economy" over the last two decades due to mismanagement, corruption and a reliance on oil revenues.

The government announced in October a series of economic reforms titled “the White Paper,” including reforms in oil, electricity, agriculture, schools, and limiting waste and corruption- but it has yet to be implemented.

Iraq has almost exclusively relied on oil revenues since the US invasion in 2003. In June, Kadhimi stated that the country currently gets 94.7 percent of its income from oil sales.