Iraq’s perfect storm of crises
COVID-19 outbreak puts pressure on fragile health system while falling oil prices threaten to hit already weak economy
As Iraq faces several severe crises simultaneously, some see the makings of a perfect storm that could prove too much for the country’s dysfunctional government to handle.
An unchecked outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) could prove to be the proverbial last straw for a country already grappling with political turmoil, dwindling oil revenues, deteriorating government services and geopolitical skirmishing.
“Iraq is on the cusp of a meltdown,” Nicholas Heras, Middle East Portfolio Manager at the Institute for the Study of War, told Arab News.
“State institutions were already collapsing before the fall in oil prices, and Iraq’s health infrastructure is too much in shambles to handle a big surge in COVID-19 cases.”
The country has reported 506 confirmed cases and 42 deaths as of March 29.
Heras attributes Iraq’s particular vulnerability to these crises to the rampant corruption that has prevailed in the country’s post-2003 political establishment.
“Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state,” he said.
The fall in the international price of oil will hit the Iraqi economy hard. The country depends on its oil revenues to fund its bloated public sector payroll, which many Iraqis rely upon for their livelihood.
The steep decline in the price of oil means it will not be able to keep up.
This closely coincided with another series of crises that have afflicted Iraq in the first three months of this decade alone. Iraqis mounted an unprecedented six-month-long protest campaign beginning last October against government corruption, which has been endemic in the post-2003 political order. Furthermore, political disputes have left the country without a prime minister since Adil AbdulMahdi resigned four months ago amid pressure from protesters. Three weeks ago, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi was nominated for the position but failed to secure approval from parliament and was rejected by the protest movement.
Adnan Al-Zurfi, former governor of Najaf, is the present prime minister-designate but faces stiff opposition from Iranbacked factions in the Iraqi parliament.
Joel Wing, an Iraq analyst and author of the “Musings on Iraq” blog, also believes that Iraq is facing a very severe set of crises, which he believes spell disaster for the troubled country.
“On the political front, the ruling parties have been unable to agree upon a new prime minister, which leaves the government completely in limbo,” he said. “There is no leadership when that is exactly what the nation needs.”
The collapse in oil prices not only means that the Iraqi government will be unable to pay public sector salaries but will also be incapable of meeting other basic costs. “Because of the government crisis, there is no planning going on for this situation,” Wing said. “Instead, you get people like the Central Bank chief saying everything is fine, and parliament is sitting on the draft
2020 budget.”
On top of this,
Iraq also has to deal with the
COVID-19 global pandemic.
Wing echoed
Heras when he pointed out that Baghdad lacks any way of properly dealing with it, given the present political and economic situation.
Even if it did have a plan, he added, it might well lack the money to implement it.
“This is a perfect storm that the country will find it very hard to pull itself out of, especially because all three issues are interconnected,” he said.
Aside from Daesh remnants still operating on its soil and continuing to pose a security threat, Iraq would likely become a major battlefield if war breaks out between the US and Iran.
The US-Iran standoff in Iraq has shown worrying signs of boiling over into open conflict in recent months.
After the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah Iraqi militia killed a US contractor in a rocket attack in late December, the US retaliated, killing several of its militia members in airstrikes.
Then, on Jan. 8, the US assassinated both Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extraterritorial Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi
Al-Muhandis,
Kataib Hezbollah’s commander, in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.
Iran responded with missile strikes on two US bases, one in Anbar and the other in Iraqi Kurdistan a few days later, leaving several US troops with brain injuries.
The US did not respond.
Calls for the expulsion of US troops from Iraq intensified by Iran-backed factions in Iraq’s parliament and other Iraqis who fear that their country would become a bloody battlefield in the US-Iran proxy war.
On March 11, Iraqi militia rocket attacks again struck a base with US personnel — killing two American troops and one British troop — and the US once again retaliated by bombing a Kataib Hezbollah target.
However, that airstrike did not seem to inflict any casualties or cause significant damage against the group.
More tit-for-tat exchanges could occur in the near future, which would likely make the situation in Iraq even more volatile.
Lawk Ghafuri, a reporter on Iraqi affairs for the Kurdish news agency Rudaw, argues that US-Iran tensions in Iraq constitute the most serious crisis facing Iraq today.
“US-Iran tensions are here to stay, as we now see new Iranianbacked groups are rising in Iraq,” Ghafuri told Arab News.
He noted that the US recently began to reposition its troops in Iraq so they could deal with the increasingly deadly threat of rocket attacks from these groups.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 outbreak is likely to affect Iraq more seriously in the near future. “From today onward, the virus will also worsen in Iraq as it did in Iran because people are ignoring the threats it poses,” Ghafuri said.
Turning a blind eye to government restrictions, Shiite pilgrims visited the shrine of Imam Musa Kazim on March 21, sparking fears that the virus would spread more rapidly in the coming days and weeks.
Kyle Orton, an independent Middle East analyst, notes that the multiple crises Iraq faces today put the country in a “uniquely precarious position.”
“If the post-2003 Iraqi state is going to give way, now is the moment,” he told Arab News.
That being said, Orton also believes that there is still a chance that the “centre will hold” since the protest movement has been significantly undermined by Iranianbacked paramilitaries and the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, relieving that primary source of domestic pressure on the Iraqi government. He also doubts that the US is seriously contesting Iranian power in Iraq despite Soleimani’s assassination, which he said was an “exception” to US President Donald Trump’s rule of not forcibly combating “Iranian imperialism” in Iraq.
“A US-Iran contest for Baghdad could be messy for the system; unhindered Iranian dominance has a short-term systemic ‘stability’, even if it means greater corruption and repression will surely re-energize the protest movement at some point in the future,” Orton said.
The inherent failures in Iraq’s post-2003 political system may bring about its downfall as it fails to meet the most fundamental needs of the Iraqi people.
Wing explained that this system mainly consists of elites who had a greater interest in enriching themselves through the monopolization of state resources.
These elites were able to retain their hold on power by creating patronage networks to whom they provided lucrative contracts and government jobs in return for support and loyalty.
“The oil wealth also allowed the ruling parties to not be responsive to the public because it didn’t need it for taxes, even though the country has a democratic system,” Wing said.
“Instead, the elite felt that the people should be dependent upon them because they controlled the state and jobs.”
This arrangement may well be unraveling since the government can no longer generate enough oil revenue to pay its employees.
“The government is being called on to deal with the public’s health when it has never shown any real interest in the people’s demands, and the parties have become so divided they can’t even decide who will rule.”
If the post-2003 political order finally does implode, it is unclear what could be in store for Iraq in the near future.
INNUMBERS
Iraq’s Fragile States Index rank (out of 178)
Health expenditure as fraction of GDP
Probability of dying under 5 years (per 1,000 births)
Life expectancy at birth (Male)
Life expectancy at birth (Female)