Crisis in Iraq yet another US neocolonial policy failure

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The folly of Washington’s nation-building efforts in Iraq has been made abundantly clear. Writes Uriel Araujo

Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court has ruled the court does not have the constitutional authority to dissolve Parliament amid the current crisis – as demanded by prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. On August 29, hundreds of protestors stormed the government palace, enraged by Sadr’s pledge to retire from politics – even though it was most likely a bluff.

This is all about the complicated religious divisions within the country. Exact demographic figures are uncertain: in 2015 the CIA World Factbook estimated that 29–34% of the Iraqi population were Sunni Muslims and 64–69% were Shia Muslims. During Saddam Hussein’s nationalist and secular Baath government, which was mostly backed by Christians and Sunnis, the Shia population was largely discriminated against. The Iran-Iraq war intensified these tensions, Iran being a Shia regional power.

Nowadays, the situation has inverted, with Sunni leaders and activists claiming to face discrimination. As for Iran’s influence, it obviously exists, but one should not inflate it. According to Jeffrey Haynes, Director of the  London Metropolitan University’s  Center for the Study of Religion, Conflict and Cooperation, Iranian transnational religious networks actually have but a limited capacity to pursue the goals of an Iranian religious soft-power, as the current crisis in Iraq shows, because different Shia groups have their own local loyalties and agendas.

In any case, an intra-Shia conflict is taking place in the country. It has been going on for quite some time, but now the situation is escalating. After Washington and its allies deposed Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein, a power vacuum ensued, and the US-led coalition established the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a transitional government under American occupation. It was created and funded as a division of the US Department of Defense, and was an American attempt to reconstruct and democratize Iraq in much the same way it was done in the case of Japan and Germany after World War II.

The experience was largely a disaster. For example, under the corrupt CPA rule, however, over $8 billion destined for the reconstruction of the country remained unaccounted for. In this context, the Mahdi Army, a Shia nationalist militia created by Moqtada al-Sadr in 2003, fought the US-led Coalition forces. In 2004, however, Shia and Sunni militants started fighting against each other. Nowadays, the Peace Companies are a revival of the Mahdi Army.

Even though the Sadr family has always had close ties to Iran, Moqtada al-Sadr takes a nationalist stance and moderately opposes Iranian political and clerical influence in his country.

Sadr’s followers won Iraq’s parliamentary election last October, but they couldn’t form a majority because, after excluding rival Shia leaders, Sadr was unable to negotiate a new government – and a new Iraqi president is yet to be elected. Such a political impasse has been going on for 10 months, and the parliament has already exceeded the constitutional timeline for forming the new government, which places the country in a kind of legal limbo and this situation invites creative proposals from rival political groups.

Amid such an ongoing political deadlock, the current caretaker government cannot approve budgets or legislation, for example.

At the end of July, Sadr’s followers invaded parliament to stop their Iran-backed Shia rivals from forming a new government. As a result of this power struggle, many demonstrations and violent street clashes have ensued. Iraq’s Green Zone, where the government is based, is now heavily guarded. The government formation process has thus been stalled, and Sadr is calling for dissolving the legislature as a solution for the political stalemate. The Coordination Framework, an alliance of Iran-backed Shia parties, which opposes Sadr’s group, apparently also wants to dissolve the legislature. However, the two opposing groups do not agree on the mechanisms for early elections, for a number of reasons.

Behind the recent political crisis escalation, there is also a spiritual one, that can be traced back to Grand Ayatollah Kadhim Al-Haeri decision to retire on August 29. He is a Marja, the highest ranking cleric title, and this was a very unusual move, as would be, for instance, the resignation of a Pope – supposedly it was the first time a Marja resigned. Al-Haeri lives in Iran, and was the spiritual mentor of Sadr, as well as a source of legitimacy for him. After resigning, Al-Haeri proclaimed his loyalty to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and urged his spiritual followers, and Sadr’s own, to follow him on this. Sadr has reacted by suggesting that pressure from the Iranian government could be behind the Marja’s decision. There is some controversy on who is to become the spiritual leader of Shias in Iraq and Iraqi Shias now face both a political and a religious vacuum of power.

The break of Iraq’s Shia consensus in any case should not be interpreted as a new “anti-Iranian” stance, for there are many subtleties pertaining to the matter, which is a complicated interplay of nationalist politics and political-religious legitimacy/succession matters.

All of this demonstrates, in any case, the folly of Washington’s nation-building efforts, which could thus be described as neocolonial endeavor, trying to superimpose Western models of governance on a civilization that has its own internal logic and complex religious and tribal cleavages.  Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has been described by many analysts as the worst US foreign policy failure in decades, but it should actually be seen as yet another instance of the collapse of the George Bush’s so-called “new world order” of American unipolarity.

Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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