For nearly two months, thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets to protest state corruption, unemployment, poor public services, and most prominently, Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs. The Iraqi government's response has been brutal; hundreds dead and thousands more wounded by Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militias tasked with quelling the protests.
Seven years ago, opposition to a predominantly Shi'ite Iraqi government was spearheaded by Sunni groups. Their grievances were aimed at the Iranian-backed Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the political marginalization of the Sunni minority population that came with the fall of Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
It is a striking difference that in this 2019 opposition movement, the protests in Baghdad and southern Iraq are dominated by Shi'ites protesting a Shi'ite government. On November 8th, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, born in Iran and the most influential Shi'ite cleric in Iraq, made a surprising statement to the government, demanding an end to the violence and full consideration of protesters' demands.
While the absence of sectarianism in the 2019 protests should be a sigh of relief for Iraq in the wake of a deadly and destructive war against the Sunni extremist group Islamic State (ISIS), there may still be societal winners and losers as protesters refuse to back down and establishment parties struggle to hold onto power.
Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has announced that he will submit his resignation to the Iraqi parliament, but it is not clear if his resignation will be accepted. Protests against the government are likely to continue as long as the Iraqi peoples' basic needs are not met.
While constitutional reform would represent a huge victory for Iraqi protesters, it might entail damning consequences for the autonomous Kurdistan Region.
Major reform of Iraq's constitution could represent a serious threat to the Kurdistan Region's current autonomy. Kurdish autonomy, including the right to maintain a military separate from the Iraqi government's armed forces, was acknowledged after Iraq's defeat in the first Persian Gulf War and officially recognized by the 2005 Iraqi Constitution. Baghdad, however, continues to be at odds with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over the legal and political right to field its own fighting force.
Najah al-Shammari, the Iraqi Minister of Defense, argues that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces are a crucial part of Iraq's military and security apparatus, and believes that the group should be integrated into Iraq's federal armed forces. This sentiment is shared by Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi and his predecessor, al-Maliki. Proponents of integration point to the need for cooperation against insurgency groups such as ISIS.
In 2017, fighting erupted between the Peshmerga and Iraqi security forces in Kirkuk after the city was liberated from ISIS by mostly Kurdish forces. The Iraqi federal government reclaimed administrative control of Kirkuk, a move widely viewed by Iraqi Kurds as government encroachment on Kurdish autonomy. For many Kurds, the Peshmerga are a necessary guarantor of self-defense and regional autonomy should constitutional mechanisms fail to protect them.
Government capitulations to Iraqi protesters may nonetheless present Baghdad with another opportunity to encroach on Kurdish autonomy. Changing the constitution may give the government what it perceives as legal-moral authority to incorporate the Kurdish Peshmerga into the federal forces on security and stability claims. Such a move would leave Iraqi Kurdistan without its greatest component of autonomy – its own military force. Optimists in the Kurdistan Region may hope that the civil unrest will force the central government in Baghdad to revisit Article 140 of the 2005 constitution and call for a new referendum over the status of Kirkuk province. However, the past twelve years indicates that such optimism is wishful thinking.
Timothy Griffin holds a graduate degree in political science from Missouri State University. He is a U.S. army veteran with eight years of experience in counter-terrorism and military intelligence.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
