Iraqi PM resigns amid worsening chaos
NAJAF, Iraq — Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi of Iraq submitted his resignation to Parliament on Saturday and planned to ask lawmakers in a televised national address to act quickly to replace him.
But Abdul-Mahdi’s formal resignation may not spell the end of the turmoil that has racked the nation over the past two months. Parliament is scheduled to meet Sunday and will vote on accepting his resignation, but it has yet to agree on a successor.
“The resignation of the government is a method of peaceful handover of power in democratic systems,” Abdul-Mahdi said in his brief speech, adding that the government had tried to meet the demands of the country’s widening protest movement.
Protests driven by anger over political corruption and Iran’s influence over Iraqi politics — coupled with the government’s violent response — had put Abdul Mahdi under intense pressure to step down. At least 400 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the United Nations and hospital sources.
Assuming Parliament accepts Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation, the formation of a new government could be many months away, a realization that quickly dissolved protesters’ initial jubilation over his announcement Friday that he would step down.
Abdul-Mahdi and his ministers would still serve in a caretaker government until President Barham Salih requests that the largest bloc in Parliament name a new prime minister. History shows that agreeing on a prime minister has been a long, arduous process of balancing competing political factions.
It became so protracted in 2018 that Iranian officials helped set up the current government, brokering an agreement that brought in Abdul-Mahdi and Salih as well as the Parliament speaker, Mohammed al-Halbousi.
One significant question is whether Iran will play the same role this time around. Since Iraqis are now openly expressing resentment toward Tehran, its open involvement might be a liability.
Across the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq, as well as in the capital Baghdad, the chant “Out, Out Iran, Baghdad Remains Free” is part of the daily protests. If one thing is clear, the fact that Iraq is majority Shiite and so is Iran does not mean that Iraqi and Iranian Shiites have shared views.
In Najaf, a city that hosts several million Iranian pilgrims annually at its shrines and where Iranian clerical students train in its religious universities, the resentment of Tehran’s insertion into Iraqi affairs is running so high that protesters burned the Iranian Consulate there on Wednesday night.
No one was inside when it caught fire because the only two Iranian employees left through the back door when security guards realized they would not be able to hold off the protesters, said Abu Rusol, a guard.
Just a few hundred feet away, the shrine of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a cleric assassinated in 2003, was a scene of tension on Saturday with protesters facing off against Shiite militiamen protecting the site.
Al-Hakim, although an Iraqi, spent years in exile in Iran and was part of the opposition to Saddam Hussein. Now his links to Iran have made his shrine a target of demonstrators.
Skirmishes continued at the shrine late Saturday afternoon. Protesters, who were largely unarmed, were coming into emergency treatment tents with gunshot wounds, said Muahin Yasseen, a fifth-year medical school student.
The violence, which the prime minister has been unable to control, had been adding to the pressure on Abdul-Mahdi for some time. The threat of a no-confidence vote in Parliament also loomed.
On Friday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, urged Parliament to stop procrastinating or “the country will pay a high price, and everyone will regret it.”
It was in the hours after al-Sistani’s message that Abdul-Mahdi announced his intention to resign.