Abadi at victory parade in Baghdad Dec 2017 (Iraq Prime
Minister Office)
Prime Minister Haidar Abadi is riding high off the recent
victory over the Islamic State. The group no longer holds any towns or cities
in Iraq, and the premier made an official announcement
of their defeat and held a victory parade
in Baghdad to celebrate. The war has made the premier vastly popular with the
public as recent opinion
polls show. Abadi now has the chance to prove himself as a politician who
can handle non-war matters a second time after failing miserably when he first
entered office.
When Abadi first became premier he portrayed himself as a
reformer to set himself apart from his predecessor Nouri al-Maliki. He started
with a purge
of the Iraqi security forces getting rid of loyalists to the former prime
minister along with those considered incompetent. In 2015, he announced a plan
to cut government waste, end sectarianism in the government, and fight
corruption. That included cutting
the number of top government officials, appointing technocrats, ending the
ethnosectarian quota system, and reforming the courts. He received backing
from Ayatollah Sistani as well as popular protests.
He immediately ran into problems however. First, he showed no sense of how to
be a leader. Abadi would only consult with a small coterie of advisers and then
drop large ideas on the parliament without building any consensus for them. That
alienated members of his own Dawa Party, along with the Sadrists and Supreme
Council who were behind him. His failure
to consult with any of them led to strong criticism. Second, he quickly lost
the initiative to others. Maliki organized
his followers in parliament to attack the PM’s
plans and sow dissent in the assembly. Moqtada al-Sadr co-opted the
demonstrations and stormed
the Green Zone in the summer of 2016 causing more chaos in Baghdad. Third, the
premier’s reforms turned out to be cost cutting
measures as the government was facing a huge budget deficit when oil prices
dropped. Needless to say, he made little progress, which was a major reason why
starting in 2016 he turned to the war against the Islamic State and dropped any
pretenses of trying to bring about any changes.
Abadi has proven to be a very good war leader, but now that
is over he faces an array of new challenges. For the last two years, the prime
minister’s sole concern was recapturing the
country’s towns and cities. That proved a huge
success, and a decided turn of events from when the Iraqi forces collapsed in
the face of the insurgents in the summer of 2014. The PM has absolutely nothing
to follow that up with. His government made no plans for reconstruction, and has
no money to pay for it anyway as Iraq continues to face low oil prices. The
same thing goes for post-IS security. The local security forces have not been
rebuilt in many areas for instance. Security in places like Anbar and Ninewa is
largely being handled by tribal Hashd units since most of the police have not
been brought back and new ones not generated. Those Hashd units can do little more
than man checkpoints and are riddled with rivalries. Abadi has also recently said
he would deal with corruption once again, as well as economic reform.
Those require systemic steps that will take years, and the entrenched interest
to maintain them are formidable. There is also the unresolved crisis with the
Kurdistan Regional Government. After moving federal forces into Kirkuk and
other disputed areas, there has been no movement on this front. Abadi may be
using the Kurds and corruption for his 2018 election campaign. That means this
may be more smoke than fire.
What this all highlights is that Premier Abadi suffers from
a lack of long term planning. He makes an initial step, but doesn’t have any follow through. This is true for the vast
majority of Iraq’s political class. Abadi has
to set himself apart from them and show that he is not so short sighted. He won’t have any time to prove himself with voting happening next
year, followed by prolonged negotiations to hold onto his office, all of which
could take up to a year before Baghdad gets back to normal.
SOURCES
Aboulenein, Ahmed, “Iraq
holds victory parade after defeating Islamic State,”
12/10/17
Agence France
Presse, “Iraq faces
tough battle against IS desert hideouts,” 11/27/17
AIN, “Yarallah announces the clearing of 7,000 km in 2nd phase of
Western Sahara,” 12/8/17
Baghdad Post, “Next phase of Jazeera clearance
operation revealed,” 12/6/17
Habib, Mustafa, “Tougher Than the Islamic State: No
Winners In Iraq’s New ‘War On Corruption,’” Niqash, 12/7/17
Al Mada, “The government opposes replacing the inspectors’ offices
with prosecutors,” 12/4/17
- “The sluggishness of the operations
command in Anbar means aborting the desert cleansing,” 12/1/17
Al Mirbad, “The end of the first page of the
second phase of the Jazeera and Euphrates operation,” 11/26/17
NINA, “New Ten Villages Cleaned Up In Anbar Province,” 12/8/17
- “The PMF Free 68 of 80 Villages Scattered Deep Into The Western Sahara
Up To The Syrian Border,” 12/9/17
- “URGENT…The PMF Announces The Completion Of Military Operations
And Full Control of Iraqi-Syrian Border,” 12/9/17
Al-Qarawee, Harith Hasan, “Iraq: Managing Economic
Reformation and Fighting Corruption, with an Eye on Election,” The
Atlantic Council, 12/4/17
Rudaw, “Iraq launches ISIS desert offensive,
Russia offers help,” 12/8/17
Al Sumaria, “Purged 35 villages and 4300 km in the
2nd phase of Jazeera and Upper Euphrates
Operation,” 12/8/17
Zavis, Alexandra, “Iraq’s prime minister declares victory in war
against Islamic State,” Los Angeles Times, 12/9/17
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