Abadi agonizes: Two new governments in a month
The Economist
Apr 16th 2016
PM for how long?
WHILE their soldiers gain ground battling Islamic State (IS), Iraq’s political leaders in Baghdad are losing their footing. On April 12th the parliamentary Speaker suspended proceedings as MPs furious at Iraq’s second new cabinet in a month resorted to fisticuffs in front of him. Over a hundred of them demanded that the prime minister, Haider Abadi, should resign, and began a sit-in. And across southern Iraq protest leaders threatened to return to the gates of the Green Zone, the government’s sheltered enclave in the heart of Baghdad.
The reason for all the politicking is a struggle over the sectarian system that has dominated Iraq since America’s invasion in 2003. For over a decade the leading factions and their militias have divvied up ministries, treating them as their fiefs. They have stuffed them with their cadres, inflating the government payroll from 1m under Saddam Hussein to 7m today. Ghost projects and ghost workers have emptied state coffers and, together with plummeting oil prices, have saddled the government with a whopping budget deficit of 25% of GDP. Though oil is being pumped in record amounts, hospitals are suspending services for lack of funds. Transparency International lists Iraq’s as the eighth-most-corrupt government in the world.
Mr Abadi’s promise to end the quota system had powerful support. America and Iran, long-term rivals for influence over Iraq, rallied behind him. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shia Islam’s chief religious authority, urged him on. Each Friday, tens of thousands of demonstrators braved blistering temperatures to echo his call for an end to corruption and Iraq’s transformation into a militia-free civil state. Last month the leader of one of the strongest Shia factions, Muqtada al-Sadr, sent out his followers from Baghdad’s shantytowns to join the protests. Still Mr Abadi dithered, unable to break free of Dawa, his own faction, which has ruled Iraq for a decade.
Only after Mr Sadr erected a protest tent in the Green Zone, and insisted he would stay there until Mr Abadi acted, did Mr Abadi finally pluck up the courage to name his own cabinet. On March 31st the prime minister went to parliament and sought its approval for his new ministers. It never came. His nominee for oil minister, a Kurdish academic, withdrew after Kurdish leaders vowed that men in Baghdad would never choose their ministers again. His finance minister also backed out, fearful of Shia gunmen. To the fury of Mr Sadr and the protesters, Mr Abadi’s second list was designed to appease the factions.
Instead of his first choice for foreign minister, Sherif Ali Hussein, a Sunni scion of the Hashemite monarchy that once ruled Iraq and has close ties to Arab Gulf states, he named Faleh al-Fayyad, an inept Dawa hand with a habit of dozing off in meetings.
What happens next is unclear. Mr Abadi’s former backers have turned their backs on him. The protesters are returning to the streets, this time to demand his resignation. Plans are afoot for a vote of no confidence in Mr Abadi, when parliament next convenes, possibly within the next few days. Fresh elections could soon follow. Mr Sadr’s men are mulling a march on the Green Zone, while other armed factions vow to prevent them. “A war is brewing to defend the sectarian system,” says Faleh Jaber, a veteran Iraqi analyst trying to mediate between some of the factions. “When Muqtada Sadr enters the Green Zone, generals open the gates and kiss his hands. If he’s shot there’ll be civil war.”
Perplexed Americans, including John Kerry, the secretary of state, have hastened to Baghdad to urge restraint and a renewed focus on what they see as the most important task, battling IS. But the situation is alarmingly volatile.
