Iraq needs strong leaders

As a new wave of violence ravages Iraq, a new wave of ‘oh dearism’ seems to have taken hold of us. Coined by the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, this disease occurs when terrible, bloody conflicts are covered by oversimplifying media without any meaningful context, so that our response is reduced to: “Oh dear.”

Last month (SEP) alone in Iraq, bombs killed nearly 1,000 people. A couple of weeks ago, 25 people were killed as 16 bombs went off on the same day. And just days ago, 10 bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing 44. That’s on top of a new survey that puts the Iraqi death toll since the eviscerating, avoidable 2003 invasion at half a million lives.

The current horror is of course the direct consequence of that US-led invasion and the ravaging aftermath executed by coalition forces, which dismantled the Iraqi government, police and security apparatus.

There was no Al Qaida in Iraq prior to that invasion, which not only opened the door to it but effectively rolled out a welcome carpet too. The US-led coalition set up avoidable rifts by marginalising Iraqi Sunnis — hobbling Iraq by fomenting sectarianism, condemning it to instability and obliterating the chance of any functional political recovery.

Corrupt, divisive and combustible policies were then pursued by the US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, whose Shiite elite-dominated government is routinely accused of authoritarianism.

Wrecking-ball mix

Al Maliki’s rule has been a wrecking-ball mix of wrongheaded and incompetent. He has disempowered Sunni politicians while simultaneously ramping up security forces and misusing terrorism laws to target Sunni areas, stirring up grievances over ethnocentric injustices. And the incompetence?

Just one detail: Al Maliki’s forces are still using the fake bomb detectors sold to Iraq by the convicted former policeman James McCormick. All of this worsened in December last year, when forces arrested the bodyguards of the Sunni former finance minister, Rafi Al Issawi, under terrorism laws, prompting mass protests that were brutally dispersed.

Added to this tinderbox is the fuel of the Syrian conflict, which now operates in a two-way flow across the border into Iraq, both now serving Al Qaida-allied groups: Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Meanwhile, the cynical proxy war waged in Syria has a hold on Iraq too: Saudi Arabia’s funding of Syrian rebels has an impact across the porous border, with Iraqi militants now becoming much better at beating security forces.

Unemployment

With so many more unemployed, marginalised people to target as potential recruits, militants are variously fighting for an Islamic state and trying to discredit Al Maliki — whose key platform for the 2014 elections is security — while also terrorising the population with protection rackets to fund activities.

Disparate groups are competing for power in Iraq — religious, secular, peaceful and violent — but it’s not true that the splits run only along sectarian lines. On the ground, affiliations aren’t so narrow either. Since 2003, polls show that even as towns and cities have become less mixed, even as there is sectarian-based fear of travel across regions, the majority of the population still wants a unified Iraq.

The trouble is that, as Zaid Al Ali, a senior adviser on constitution building for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Cairo, says: “There is no party, no movement, no cause that brings them together.”

Now, ahead of elections next year, the country desperately needs leadership worthy of the Iraqi people — consensus-based leaders who put national unity above corrupted politics and personal gain.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Rachel Shabi is author of Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands.