BAGHDAD – For most days in Iraq’s capital, jackhammers and electric drills set the tone for a construction boom, with multi-story restaurants taking shape and an 800-dollar new central bank building million dollars on the horizon.
But this apparent prosperity in parts of Baghdad demonstrates what many Iraqi officials and citizens see as the bedrock of the state’s demise – the oil-rich Middle Eastern state the United States was destined to become. freedom and democracy when leading an invasion 19 years ago. overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein.
Following the invasion, Iraq’s longstanding Shiite Muslim majority came to dominate the government, and a power struggle between Shiite and Sunni political groups prompted a sectarian war. Now, in a dangerous threat to the country’s longstanding stability, rival Shiite armed groups, the most powerful of which have ties to neighboring Iran, are fighting each other and beyond the control of the central government.
Saad Eskander, an Iraqi historian, said: “At home, abroad, at the political level and at the security level, Iraq is now a failed state. “The Iraqi state cannot condone its power over its territory or its people.”
Iraq’s weaknesses were once again cleared up last week when an impasse over forming a new government – nearly a year after the last election – erupted into violence in the heart of the capital.
Followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the heavily guarded Green Zone during an anti-government protest after Mr. Sadr announced his withdrawal from politics. Then, pro-Iranian Shiite paramilitary fighters on public payroll began firing at the protesters, and armed members of a Sadr militia rose up to fight them.
Ordered by the prime minister not to fire at the protesters, government security forces largely shunned aside while rival militias countered it. After two days of fighting that left 34 people dead, Mr. Sadr ordered his followers to withdraw from the Green Zone, restoring an uneasy calm.
The violence stemming from an impasse over forming a government has persisted since the October 2021 election.
Sadr’s followers won the largest number of seats in Parliament, although that was not enough to form a government without coalition partners. When he failed to assemble a governing coalition, major Iran-backed parties with the paramilitary faction – Shiite political opponents to Mr Sadr – stepped in and tried to side him out.
Mr Sadr then turned to hold his power in the streets rather than at the negotiating table, ordering his followers to set up a protest camp in Parliament – a tactic he has used in the past.
“If we discuss Iraq after 2003, then we have to say that it was never really a functioning state,” said Maria Fantappie of Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, a conflict management organization based in Switzerland. “We have never had a prime minister with full control of security forces or the border.”
Iraq did not collapse largely because of the country’s oil wealth. But most residents never see the benefits of that wealth, suffering daily power cuts, dilapidated schools and a lack of healthcare or even clean water.
Last month, the country’s respected Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, resigned with the stark warning that staggering levels of corruption were draining Iraq’s resources and posed an existential threat.
“The vast underground network of high-ranking officials, corrupt businessmen, and politicians operates in the shadows to dominate all sectors of the economy and extract billions of dollars from the pockets of people. public money,” Allawi wrote in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister. “This giant octopus of corruption and deceit has penetrated every sector of the country’s economy and institutions: It must be destroyed at all costs if this country is to survive.”
Mr Allawi, who also served as finance minister in 2006, said he was shocked to return to “how degraded the government apparatus is” under the dominance of special interest groups tied to the United States. different countries in the region.
“You have people flying to Tehran, flying to Amman, flying to Ankara, flying to the UAE, flying to Qatar,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in June. “They used to fly to Washington before, but they don’t do that anymore.”
Meanwhile, the United States has become increasingly detached from the Arab world, focusing mainly on containing Iran and promoting normalization with Israel. For years the target of hostilities over the occupation of Iraq, the country now appears to be losing its relevance as Shiite militias battle for a unified position.
Iraq stands above the world fourth largest oil reservesand oil revenues both feed corruption and support the economy.
According to state and local officials, militia and tribal groups customs revenue extraction from the Iraqi Gulf port of Umm Qasr. Crossings along the 1,000-mile border with Iran are another source of illegal revenue. Iran-backed militias in Iraq control sectors like scrap iron and they blackmail businesses for protection.
Government contracts are another major source of corruption.
The Iraqi Ministry of Health, traditionally run by officials loyal to Mr. Sadr, is the exclusive buyer of nearly half of the drugs imported into Iraq and considered one of the most corrupt ministries, according to Iraqi officials and outside experts.
Three years ago, Ala Alwan, a former World Health Organization official, resigned as Health Secretary, saying he could not fight corruption in the ministry or stop the threats.
Mr Allawi, in an interview in June when he was still finance minister, described a country that has become essentially unrecoverable.
“You can’t do anything but manage the day-to-day affairs, because in this country, every day there is a crisis,” he said.
With the war in Ukraine causing oil prices to rise state revenue recently come from oil exports – a lack of diversification could spell disaster as the world increasingly turns to alternative energy sources.
But with dysfunctional ministries and weak central government, there has been no real effort to improve public services or the lives of the quarter of the population estimated by the government to live in poverty. poor.
Large parts of the country lacked electricity or clean water – a crisis that continued to spark widespread protests three years ago, leading to the collapse of the government.
Few areas are as clearly dysfunctional as the country’s once esteemed education system. For nearly seven years, thousands of temporary teachers worked without pay, waiting for the opportunity to be recruited by the Ministry of Education. The Department has already started paying.
Schools are so overcrowded that they work in shifts, providing only half a day of classes for students. Many schools lack running water or do not have enough toilets. Most are lucky if they have a fan in the 100 degree heat.
More than half of Iraqi students drop out of school before high school. In Baghdad and other cities, children after school push wooden carts in open-air markets or carry water bottles to motorists in traffic.
“We are not getting new textbooks this year,” said Um Zahra, an elementary school teacher who is doing paperwork at the education ministry this week. “We’re trying to use the old ones,” she added, saying she didn’t want to give her full name because she wasn’t authorized to say her husband’s.
Um Zahra said her neighborhood in Baghdad, the second largest city in the Middle East, has been without regular running water since 2014.
There is so little faith in the political system that in Baghdad, turnout was around 30% in the last elections. Many expect similar corrupt politicians to stay in power thanks to a post-2003 system that guarantees key positions to specific ethnic and religious groups.
With neighbors Iran and Turkey both regularly violating Iraq’s sovereignty, the weakness of the Iraqi government and state institutions poses a threat to the stability of the region – such as happened in 2014 when the Iraqi army collapsed before the Islamic State attack invaded much of the Country.
Eskander, the historian, says Iraq’s instability can be traced back to before Saddam’s overthrow, when the country lost control of some of its borders and territories during the Iran-Iraq war. But he said he still had hope that the country would survive.
“Changing leaders – changing generations – is the only way,” Mr. Eskander said.
