All Iraqis want are jobs, basic services and justice
Widespread protests have erupted across southern Iraq over the past two weeks, sparked by long-simmering grievances regarding insufficient electricity, water quality, and unemployment. While demonstrations are common during Iraq’s hot summer months, this year’s protests appear far more broad in terms of participation, geographic spread, and violence as they expand from the oil export city of Basra through Maysan, Dhi Qar, Wasit, Babil, Karbala, and Najaf provinces.
How did southern Iraq reach this boiling point? July’s outburst of anger —directed at parties across Iraq’s political spectrum, foreign oil companies, and, notably, Iran — points to several factors driving southern Iraqi instability that extend beyond the recent escalating protest movement. Critically, the interrelated effects of economic collapse and endemic corruption, severe environmental degradation, and ongoing tribal and criminal violence undermine Baghdad’s ability to exert meaningful control over its southern provinces, while insufficient service-provision and poor governance leaves many southerners with a sense of disaffection from the national political process.
Public anger and instability have been brewing in southern Iraq since late 2017, when Basrawis demonstrated against insufficient electricity supplies, poor water quality, and controversial plans to reform the electric-sector’s fee structure. Over the past year there have been more than 260 separate protests, often expressing highly local demands such as wage increases, infrastructure development, or improved water and service provision. More recently, between November 2017 and April 2018, southern Iraq averaged 12 to 14 significant (comprising more than 150 individuals) protests per month, with large-scale electricity-related demonstrations concentrated around Nasiriyah, Basra, Samawah, and Rumaitha. By June, the region experienced at least one protest each day, focusing on clean water, employment, infrastructure development, and sufficient electricity. Basra, where demonstrations originated, encapsulates much of the anger felt by southern Iraqis, as well as the sources of instability driving July’s demonstrations: 15 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, it remains without sufficient electricity, water, healthcare, educational, or other basic services despite vast oil wealth.
The Iraqi government, of course, cannot afford long-term instability in the south. Basra’s oilfields and Arabian Gulf export terminal account for approximately 95 per cent of the country’s GDP and its only sea-access. The region sent tens of thousands of young men to fight against Daesh in the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), many of whom are now returning home with their weapons. Yet, many Iraqi political leaders took southern Iraq’s relative stability for granted, ignoring steadily growing political volatility, economic malaise, and deep public anger against both provincial and national politicians. During the May 2018 parliamentary elections, only 14.4 per cent of Basra’s eligible voters went to the polls (compared to a still-dismal 44.5 per cent nationally), a figure that underscored the region’s sense of dislocation from Baghdad and ongoing desires among the population for increased autonomy from the federal government.
Given its location and natural resource wealth, Basra could be Iraq’s wealthiest and most secure province. It has remained relatively immune from Daesh activity and is home to the country’s only ports and most productive oilfields. High oil prices between 2010 and 2014 fuelled a period of rapid development that seemed to presage a stable future. By 2013, Basra city boasted new restaurants, movie theaters, and shopping malls visited by families looking to spend newly acquired income from oil-sector jobs.
This growth, however, belied endemic corruption jeopardising emerging prosperity. Flush with cash from a booming oil sector, the Baghdad government paid billions of dollars to international oil companies between 2010 and 2014 to incentivise expansion into southern Iraq. A significant portion of these funds was siphoned into “protection fees” to pay local armed groups linked to powerful tribal organisations. This extortive economy subsidised Basra’s tribal and militia groups, as tribal leaders cemented influence by securing provincial ministry jobs for their members.
Years of insufficient services, institutionalised corruption, environmental degradation, and insecurity has left Basrawis — as well as their neighbours across southern Iraq — with few outlets for anger other than protest. Baghdad and provincial politicians have offered few long-term solutions. On July 15, Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi announced a series of measures to assuage
15 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq remains without sufficient electricity, water, healthcare
protester demands that included additional financial allocations to desalinate water and increase water quotas in Basra, Dhi Qar, Muthanna, and Diwaniya. Three days earlier, the Iraqi Oil Ministry pledged to create 10,000 new jobs— an announcement met with justified incredulity on the streets of Basra.
Such half-measures ignore the roots of instability in southern Iraq and fail to provide long-term or economically sustainable reforms. By contrast, critical efforts to boost southern Iraq’s desalination capacities, like the $7 billion Common Seawater Supply Project, remain ensnared in bureaucratic red tape. Troublingly, the current caretaker government, already mired in negotiations to form a governing coalition after the May elections, has few incentives to pursue long-term development now. Instead, political elites may resort to time-tested methods of protest resolution, combining co-option and coercion. It is dubious whether such an approach can succeed in southern Iraq, following years of official neglect. Without more thorough government engagement to address the problems facing southern regions, current grievance could presage greater instability.