No more excuses for Iraqi government’s ambivalence
Ongoing mass protests across various parts of the world appear to emphasize that words alone can no longer calm a populace frustrated with governments divorced from the average citizen’s painful reality. It resonates across all movements, from climate action to anti-corruption, anti-austerity, and demands for more inclusivity, freedom and greater participation in key democratic processes.
Iraq is one of many countries experiencing such a surge in public anger, which has fueled the deadliest unrest since Daesh’s defeat two years ago. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi’s calls for calm have not helped assuage disenfranchised and disappointed Iraqis; neither did a promise to pass laws that would grant a basic income to the nation’s poor. On Saturday, the PM also established a public inquiry to investigate the deaths of protesters. At the heart of Iraqis’ grievances are an out-of-touch government, poor basic services, exceedingly high unemployment and rampant corruption.
Iran has persistently sought to extend its influence into the war-torn neighboring land, which is stumbling as it begins a painful recovery process after exorcising the experience of the US-led invasion, followed by Daesh, whose remnants are still being isolated. As a result, sanctions-ridden Iran has often become a stumbling block to Iraqis’ aspirations of rebuilding in a post-Daesh era. Undue Iranian influence aside, protester antipathy also comes from Baghdad’s failure to transform oil wealth into sustainable economic growth. Iraq holds the fifth-largest proven oil reserves and is OPEC’s secondbiggest producer at more than 4.5 million barrels per day. However, economic growth has been sluggish, given the poor security situation, slow reconstruction efforts, dismal private investment and the lack of fiscal policy reforms focusing on comprehensive recovery, rather than merely patching up leaks.
The World Bank estimates that Iraq will need as much as $88 billion to completely recover from the years of conflict and internal strife. The country can certainly afford it, given that it makes more than $90 billion a year from oil exports alone, at current production and market prices.
Yet there are very few job or incomegenerating opportunities for many of the disaffected, particularly in Basra, where 90 percent of the country’s oil is produced. To protesters, the country’s vast oil wealth should be more than adequate to provide better living standards and some guarantee of jobs or economic opportunities. Yet citizens are grappling with unsafe drinking water, power shortages and untreated sewage flowing into waterways that are essential to the livelihoods of those living further downstream. Nearly a quarter of Iraq’s 40 million inhabitants subsist on less than $2 a day and a fifth of the country’s youth are either unemployed or underemployed. In addition, even though it has been two years since Daesh’s defeat, millions of
Iraqis remain internally displaced, which deprives war-ravaged areas of the necessary manpower to jumpstart the much-needed recovery efforts.
It is no wonder that the government’s fumbling responses have fallen on deaf ears and, even more troubling, there is little urgency in Baghdad to transmit an openness about the solutions aimed squarely at the heart of these frustrations. Shutting down the internet, curfews and failing to rein in the use of live ammunition against protesters signal that Baghdad is content with doubling down, while paying lip service to citizens’ demands. The situation reproduces an all-too-familiar refrain that is on display elsewhere around the world, where words alone are no longer enough. For those already struggling, fatalism becomes an attractive recourse, seeing as poverty, joblessness and deplorable conditions have left them with nothing to lose.
Iraqis want concrete action and, while important, the minutiae of transforming oil wealth to tangible reconstruction efforts and guaranteed economic opportunities is irrelevant at this point. Slogans and vacuous speeches must make way for bulldozers, trucks and armies of hard-hatted workers clearing debris, digging foundations, laying rebar, paving new roads and reconnecting utility lines. The ultimate aim being the revival of a largely decimated private sector that would, in turn, provide sustainable opportunities for Iraq’s disaffected.
To achieve this, Baghdad should have set clear goals within acceptable timelines and then accompanied that with the necessary nationwide momentum. Its failure to do so has only fomented further unrest, which delays critical recovery or reconstruction efforts, prompting a deathly spiral. The presence of Daesh and efforts to eradicate it may have given Baghdad cover for its glacial pace at stitching the country back together after more than two decades of chaos, conflict and internal instability. But there is no excuse anymore. If anything, a competent government would have finalized reconstruction plans inclusive of all stakeholders in the shadow of counterinsurgency operations. At their conclusion, it would have only been a matter of activating these plans and amending them as necessary. However, current fiscal policies and the national budget do not reflect any political will for the comprehensive actions now being demanded by protesters.
Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but the
Iraqi government’s ambivalence is especially confounding given the potential consequences of its apparent policy failures. At worst, as more protests erupt, the country could see a re-emergence of the lawlessness that birthed Daesh. None of these outcomes bode well for an Iraq looking to establish a stable democracy, along with the fundamental institutions and processes that support it. Worse yet, an unstable Iraq will only further destabilize a region already reeling from Iranian adventurism, the Yemen war, Arab disunity, and now Turkey’s extended foray into Syria’s civil war.