In the maelstrom of bad news this month, Iraq has been overlooked. But November began with some seriously bad news for the self-proclaimed reform government of prime minister Haider Al-Abadi. Parliament voted to block Abadi’s ability to make any reforms without consulting them first, effectively emasculating his administration.
When he set out his reform program in August, there was cautious optimism that at last real change was coming after the corrupt and disastrous rule of Nouri Al-Maliki. It even seemed that parliament was prepared to back him. But in the almost three months since Abadi set out his program, the tortuous and self-serving political establishment has pushed back.
This is in itself depressing, since the reforms that the prime minister was proposing were, when examined closely, fair weak anyway. The world’s media had hailed them as positive and Abadi as the man to start to end the vicious and fatal communal divisions between Shia, Sunni and Kurd, crack down on corruption, reorganize the army and start the country off on the long road to economic recovery. But this was a poor judgement call, which largely reflected relief at the departure of the deeply discredited Maliki.
Abadi, undoubtedly aware of the immense challenges that a reforming government would face, was actually moving with extreme caution, not to say timidity. Thus although he had denounced corruption and promised to slash ministries and the bloated and ineffective bureaucracy, he quickly tempered his rhetoric to target instead merely “waste”.
His attempt to push Maliki out of the vice-presidency to which he had clung when he lost power has turned into a fiasco. Abadi tried to abolish all three vice-presidential roles, which was constitutionally questionable since the basic law states that there should be at least one vice-president. However, Maliki has maneuvered successfully against the measure.
But perhaps just as importantly, Abadi’s attempt to rebuild the army, purging the incompetent commanders appointed by Maliki on the basis on cronyism rather than ability, has clearly failed. Poorly led, the low morale of the Iraqi troops caused them to abandon strong positions and masses of US-supplied equipment in a series of routs in the face of far smaller terrorist forces from Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS).
The surge of the fanatics was only stopped by the appearance of Shia militias and their Iranian advisers, backed by US-led international airpower. Though nominally under army command, the militias are a law unto themselves. Indeed the few good commanders Abadi has managed to promote have been ignored. Thus an army unit recently under attack by terrorists was refused any support from a nearby militia commander.
It now seems clear that Abadi got the premiership not so much because he was a compromise candidate but because he was the man the established political groups reckoned would do their vested interests the least harm. Having no strong political platform of his own, he was always going to have to rely on the support of the men who put him in power.
To their dismay, ordinary Iraqis are discovering just how constrained and powerless Abadi really is. Perhaps his greatest failing has been to do absolutely nothing to try and restore the trust of the Sunni community. So much had been hoped for from a man who probably never had the power to deliver anything. Iraq’s tragedy goes on.
