How the fall of Saddam reshaped the Middle East
Amultiparty general election due to be held in Iraq next month will be the fourth since the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. This is a remarkable achievement in a country that, prior to this, last witnessed a multiparty election, albeit with limitations, in 1957 under a monarchy that was overthrown in a coup the following year.
Iraq, however, is still far from establishing peace, stability, democracy and prosperity. Its people were liberated from a ruthless regime but have witnessed more suffering, albeit of a different nature, in the past 15 years.
The regime change of 2003 was possible thanks to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion by a US-led international coalition that led to the swift collapse of the Iraqi armed forces. The international Coalition Provisional Authority was established to run Iraq in the absence of the pre-invasion authorities, and the process was launched to set up a new government under a new constitution.
Hopes of creating the basis for a free, peaceful and democratic Iraq were quickly dimmed by the emergence of a destructive insurgency against the coalition forces and their Iraqi allies. The insurgency gradually turned into a Shiite-Sunni conflict that by 2006 threatened to engulf Iraq in a sectarian civil war. The combined efforts of the coalition and newly established Iraqi forces, supported by Kurdish peshmerga in the north and Arab tribes in the south, helped to avert this.
However the political changes that would shape the future of post-Saddam Iraq were already taking place.
Under the new constitution, parliament elects the president and the prime minister, although real power is concentrated in the hands of the latter, including the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces. All political groups agreed to allocate the post of prime minister to Shiites, president to the Kurds and parliament speaker to the Sunnis. This agreement based on sectarian lines was meant to stabilise the political and security situation, but turned out to be at the heart of all future problems. The status quo opened the door for regional powers to interfere in Iraq’s affairs, some less, others more so.
Iran emerged as a significant player. Iraq is increasingly controlled by a Shiite religious and political class closely tied to the Islamic Republic. The Popular Mobilisation Forces were formed on a purely Shiite ideology similar to that of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The PMF is now by law an independent military force parallel to the Iraqi army. After last year’s Kurdish independence referendum, the PMF was the main force sent to confront the peshmerga and take back Kirkuk and other disputed territories from Kurdish rule.
Despite the recent reduction of tension between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, a mountain of issues remain.
The Kurds are not the only component of Iraq who have serious problems with the Shiite-dominated ruling establishment. Sunni Arabs feel they are marginalised and treated as second-class citizens. While drafting the constitution in 2005, the Sunni Arab representatives opposed the article stating that Iraq is a federal state.
But now desperation has driven them to make a U-turn and demand a Sunni federal region similar to the KRG. But they have not gone as far as to demand independence.
So quo vadis Iraq? Fifteen years after Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraqis still ask: can a united Iraq survive? A recommendation to the US government in a report last year by the Iraq Task Force, a group of politicians, academics and experts set up by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, says: “It is in the interest of our national security that we do our best to help bring about an Iraq that is independent, stable and prosperous: one at peace with its neighbours; one reflecting legitimate and effective governance and one strongly inclined to co-operate closely with the United States in the Middle East and beyond.”
Many Iraqis are not convinced that such a goal can be achieved without changing the status quo. But such change may not come for the next few years at least. For a fourth time in 15 years, next month’s elections will be fought between political blocs formed on a sectarian basis.