Iraq's Dysfunctional Democracy (review)

In the current wave of transformations in the Arab world, the call for democracy and social justice is loudly heard, though hardly achieved. Iraq stands out by its near silence. The invasion by the US and its allies in 2003 removed one of the bloodiest and most repressive regimes in the region, only to be replaced by multiple authoritarian autocracies under sectarian and ethno-religious bosses. Now, with the ascendance of Prime Minister Maliki, maneuvering elite military and security units under his personal control and ruthlessly removing challengers and rivals, even this plurality of autocracies is threatened. "Democracy" consists of elections, plenty of them, all conducted on the bases of sectarian, tribal, and local allegiances. The resulting fragmentary and unstable coalitions involve the sharing of ministries and functions by the different constituents, each treating their position as a private fiefdom for jobs, contracts, and spectacular embezzlement of state funds. One chapter in this book is aptly entitled "Republic of Corruption." The ruling faction of Maliki calls itself "the State of Law" without consciousness of irony.

This is a lucid and passionate book, written with palpable indignation and anger behind the analysis, trying to identify the chains of events and processes that have landed the country in this mess. It is not difficult to trace: the repeated wars and destruction brought upon the country by the Saddam regime, culminating in the devastation of the Kuwait war of 1990-91, followed by the period of UN sanctions that further impoverished the population and debased the society, while making the regime ever more violent and rapacious. There then occurred the 2003 invasion, which brought about further destruction and enacted a process of transition which is amazing in its incompetence and ignorance: sacking the government and the army, and bringing in the sectarian and ethnic bosses in a rush to "democracy." Of course, the ready conspiracy theories of the region saw this as deliberate wrecking, which is only implausible because of its costs and consequences for the US. The ostensible victims of the Saddam regime, the Arab Shi'a and the Kurds, emerged as the power centers of the new "democracy," aided by an electoral majoritarian calculus. The Kurds strive, successfully, to maintain their autonomous enclave, inaugurated after the 1991 Kuwait war and the "safe haven" afforded them by allied protection. The Shi'a are divided into bickering parties, factions, and militias, with various relations to Iran. Their bosses and leading families share in the bounty of state resources, while their vast constituencies remain poor and oppressed, lacking the basic services withheld in the massive diversion of funds into private accounts through inflated contracts and ghost projects.

"Federalism," the subject of one chapter, is enshrined in the 2005 constitution, formulated by Shi'i and Kurdish parties, and boycotted by Sunnis and was a formula for carving up regional powers with poorly specified conditions. It was a deal between Kurds, confirmed in their ethnically based autonomy, and Shi'i parties aspiring to power in oil rich southern regions. The Shi'ite parties also wrote theocratic provisions into the constitution, with vague provisions on legislation conforming to Islam. Unspecified Islam, interpreted by imposed religious authority, is a formula for arbitrary rule which mostly affects family and gender issues — the subject of another chapter. The Kurds, with proclaimed secularism, exempt their region from these religious impositions. Apart from the de facto autonomy of the Kurdish region, the federalism of the constitution has been largely redundant, called upon solely to justify political manoeuvres, such as the recent attempt by Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice-president, to use provisions for regional power to challenge the centralizing authoritarianism of Maliki, only to be indicted by the latter on charges of terrorism and having to seek protection in the Kurdish region and subsequently in exile.

Iraq's Dysfunctional Democracy is a good exposition of the sorry state of Iraq. We know, for instance, that corruption is rife, but to see the systematic accounts of the staggering levels and avenues of corruption over...