Twenty years ago, amid disinformation about Al Qaeda ties and secret
bioweapon labs, the United States launched an illegal invasion of Iraq.
As the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) noted in its 2013 report:
From its inception in 2003, de-Baathification was a deeply flawed
process. Ineffective and incoherent, it polarized Iraqi politics and
contributed to severe instability in the Iraqi military and government—
not just in the first flush of regime change, but extending as far as
the parliamentary elections of 2010, some seven years later.
De-Baathification and the flawed and rushed-through constitution of
2005 ensured that endemic corruption - beyond anything that Iraqis had
endured during the Saddam years - would flourish, crippling the
country’s ability to find a way past a history of violent dictatorship,
three wars, sanctions and brutal jihadist insurgencies culminating in
ISIS.
Renad Mansour, the head of Chatham House’s Iraq Initiative argued
that the dominant narrative of the 2003 war was regime change and that
“the decision was made to destroy the state, remove the army, remove the
civil service.” Western analysts view this in hindsight as simply
massive blunders. But Mansour wondered was it mistake or logic? The
effect was to enable “strangers to become powerful” to empower new
elites and to saddle the Iraqi people not with a single strongman but a
plethora of aspirants armed with sectarian ideologies and militias that
enable access to violence whilst competing amongst themselves for the
spoils.
One who attempted to seize the strongman crown was Nouri al-Maliki,
prime minister from 2006 -2014. In his second term, following a disputed
election, he secured the backing
of then US Vice President Joe Biden. Al-Maliki, confident of US
support, proceeded to embark on an anti-Sunni campaign that saw the
military purged of Sunni officers and campaigns of violence conducted
against Sunni civilians. His efforts helped to enable the stunning
success of ISIS in 2014 with many Sunni Iraqis initially viewing the
jihadists as liberators.
The Iraqi political scientist Loulouwa al-Rachid commented that in
al-Maliki’s effort to consolidate authority in the style of Saddam, he
ultimately failed because the highly competitive political system that
emerged post-2003 simply would not allow any one figure to centralise
power. Nonetheless, under al-Maliki the politics of greed and predation
prevailed among the new elites. Corruption was rampant. As al-Rachid
wryly pointed out “his only accomplishment was to ensure that corruption
was equally distributed.”
The UK ambassador to Iraq from 2003 to 2005 was William Patey. In
acknowledging that there were many deficiencies in the 2005
constitution, Sir William said that the pressure was on just to get it
done. “I was asking for more time but was put firmly back in the box by
the President (Bush) and the Prime Minister (Blair). I was told it
needed to be done by the end of August.”
The constitution formalised muhasasa the sectarian-based governance system introduced by the coalition post-war. Muhasasa enables
the division of government ministries along sectarian and tribal lines
and allows and encourages the rampant corruption that sees an
energy-rich country lacking a secure electricity supply, a health system
that is not only dysfunctional but plagued by fake pharmaceuticals, a
lack of clean water, an education system not fit for purpose that
betrays young Iraqis, in other words a state that is failing its people.
Al-Rachid and the other panel members were all in agreement that
change must come from inside Iraq and the struggle for equality and good
governance from within Iraqi society. She described an interregnum
period, this mutant state where “Ayatollah Sistani has the right to
declare war, warlords as MPs get the budget for their militias from the
state, Iran-backed militias are proud Iraqi chauvinists and Basra with
much of the country’s oil wealth is encumbered with massive poverty.”
“Iraq,” she said “ is a liquid society, volatile, there is fear
everywhere and after 20 years we don’t know who rules and we don’t know
who will win at the end of the process.”
Renad Mansour lamented that in the contestation between America and
Iran, Iraq is caught and yet forgotten. Finding a forward path calls for
accountability both from those who invaded and those inside Iraq who
have benefitted from the invasion at the expense of the people of Iraq.
But where will that accountability come from and who will oversee it?
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad offered one final insight: “the biggest victim is democracy in the Middle East.”