Conflicts in West Asia: Iraq in disarray

The modern Middle East has remained unstable and ridden with conflicts due to various historical, political and socio-economic factors. Besides the domestic and regional problems, the involvement of great powers in regional affairs is often considered as either causing troubles or aggravating them as far as the Middle East is concerned. 

Iraq is one of the prime examples of how the confluence of domestic, regional and international factors devastated a state and society. Historically, the area that today constitutes Iraq was a prosperous and flourishing land. The abode of the Mesopotamian civilisation in ancient times and the seat of the Abbasid Empire during the mediaeval period, Iraq today is a sad reflection of its past.

The state of disarray in Iraq today is such that the central authority has only limited control over the security of the state. There are multiple centres of authority, and the elected government has only been able to exert limited influence over different sectors.

At times, militias run by individuals and associated with various political movements exert greater control over resources and people than the elected government. 

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Furthermore, terror groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) remain active and are reportedly regaining ground. Security remains a serious concern as the Iraqi armed forces are challenged by the proliferation of armed militants backed by influential leaders and external actors.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein

Iraq has a history of conflicts and problems, especially under former President Saddam Hussein. After taking control of the state in 1979, he appropriated power, eliminated any opposition, and used brute force to suppress any opposition to his rule, including by Kurds and Shias. 

Saddam’s ambitions for regional leadership meant that he attacked Iran in 1980 in the name of preventing the export of the Islamic revolution that caused the Iraq-Iran war. Having pushed Iraq into serious economic troubles, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 on the flimsy ground that Kuwait has historically been a part of Iraq.

The US-led coalition war to liberate Kuwait and the subsequent international sanctions further deteriorated the Iraqi economy and weakened the state. To make matters worse, the George Bush administration partly blamed Iraq for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the possession of weapons of mass destruction, and decided to intervene militarily to bring about a regime change.

The US invasion of Iraq

The 2003 US invasion proved to be a defining moment in the contemporary history of Iraq, changing its fate and creating a power vacuum that continues to haunt Iraq two decades since. The initial success of the US-led military intervention was as swift as it was misleading. Saddam was removed, captured, tried and executed, and his regime was dismantled. However, this created a strong resentment among the Sunni population in the country that went on to back the insurgency led by radical and extremist groups. 

Map showing Iraq and the Middle East. (Google Maps)

The Sunni insurgency primarily targeted the US military but also resented the increasing Shia control over the state under Iranian patronage. The targeting of the Shi’a population and shrines meant that Iraq descended into a violent sectarian conflict that took the shape of a civil war between 2006 and 2008. The Sunni insurgency in Iraq was led by the Islamic State in Iraq that traced its origin to Al-Qaeda and the remnants of the Ba’athist regime of Saddam.

The 2011 Arab uprisings and ISIS

While Iraq was yet to recover from the violence and turmoil caused by the US invasion, the Arab uprising broke out in December 2010, soon engulfing the entire region. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain faced serious political upheavals; other regional countries were also not free from their impact. 

Although Iraq did not witness a popular uprising, unlike Egypt and Syria, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saw the regional situation as an opportunity to achieve the goal of establishing a global Islamic State and the long-ended institution of Islamic Caliphate. He gained a strong following among the Iraqi Sunni population, who were unhappy with the sectarian state of politics under the elected government. 

Baghdadi called for a wider jihad against the US and its allies in the region to free Arab-Islamic territories from their control. By select use of Quranic and Hadith injunctions and savvy use of social media, ISIS was able to gain a significant global following and attract several thousand youths from across the region and the world to Iraq to fight for the so-called al-Dawla al-Islamiyah or the Islamic State.

ISIS also spread its fight in Syria and soon was able to take control of vast swathes of land in Iraq and Syria. In 2014, after taking control of the ancient city of Mosul in Iraq, Baghdadi announced the establishment of the global Islamic Caliphate and declared himself as the new Caliph. 

Defeat of ISIS

The reign of terror that began in Iraq and Syria soon spread to other parts of the Middle East, and its impact was felt far beyond the region in Europe, Africa, and South, Southeast and Central Asia. The refugee crisis emerging from Iraq and Syria created mayhem in Europe. 

Eventually, it led to the US-led military coalition undertaking counterterrorism measures simultaneously with Iran to help the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi Kurdish forces known as peshmerga that finally defeated ISIS by the end of 2017. Baghdadi was finally killed in October 2019 in Syria, where he was hiding in Idlib province.

While ISIS was defeated, the inability of the Iraqi political class and social groups to come to terms with the problems facing the country has caused Iraq to remain under political uncertainty and resulted in increased security challenges. Discontent among the youth with the political system has risen as the proportional representation system has not resolved the people’s socio-economic challenges.

Growing Political Discontent 

Challenges such as poor educational and employment opportunities, negligible civic amenities and scarcity of basic needs such as drinking water and food created a situation in Iraq that witnessed a series of popular protests in different parts of the country between 2018 and 2020. The advent of COVID-19 and its impact on the healthcare and economy further created serious discontent among the people.

The Iraqi polity is a divided house today. Despite the increasing socio-economic and security challenges and growing political discontent, Iraqi leaders have refused to put up a united front. It took Iraqi politicians almost a year to form a government after the parliamentary elections in October 2021, when the group led by Muqtada al-Sadr emerged as the single largest group. 

The stalemate among Sadrist and other political groups ended in Sadr calling for the mass resignation of elected members of his group from the parliament, eventually paved the way for the discredited former Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to make a political comeback, propping loyalist Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, as the new premier. Despite international support, Sudani has not been able to bring Iraq out of its political, economic and security problems. 

Iraq’s multifaceted challenges

Consequently, the  government enjoys little domestic support as major political groups, especially Sadrists, youth movements, and the majority of Sunnis, remain dissatisfied with the state of affairs. Meanwhile, several domestic and international reports have suggested that ISIS is slowly trying to regain lost ground and mount a comeback, especially in the northeastern Sulaymaniyah governorate.

Iraq today faces a serious and multifaceted challenge encompassing economic, political, societal and security domains. The demographic and political divisions among Sunni, Kurd and Shi’a have hardly served the people who have time and again demanded better educational and economic opportunities. 

Mounting food and water security woes and the growing threats from climate change and global warming have aggravated the people’s problems. Conventional security threats continue to loom on the horizon. Unconcerned, the political class remains divided into sectarian and partisan lines, busy seeking support and proving loyalty to their regional and international benefactors. 

The geopolitical tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the broader regional turmoil due to the Israel-Hamas war that has threatened to escalate into a full-blown Israel-Iran war, if not contained, can once again engulf Iraq into a quagmire that would push it into another phase of endless violence and turmoil.

Post Read Question

When did Iraq invade Kuwait and why?

Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003? Discuss its consequences.

Iraq is one of the prime examples of how the confluence of domestic, regional and international factors devastated a state and society. Comment.

ISIS is reportedly trying to regain lost ground and mount a comeback, especially in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. What kind of implications could it have for India?

(The author is Associate Professor of Middle East studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views are personal. @MuddassirQuamar)

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