As protesters throughout the region challenge their authoritarian leaders, Iraqis are also standing up and demanding more accountability from their government and an end to the corrupt practices of their politicians. Regions across the country, including Kurdistan, are seeing protests.
Carnegie’s Marina Ottaway and Henri J. Barkey and Denise Natali, the Minerva Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, discussed Iraq’s future as the region continues to be rocked by demonstrations. Carnegie’s Marwan Muasher moderated.
The unique characteristics of Iraq’s unrest
Unlike protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya—which have been characterized by a direct confrontation between the public and a monolithic authoritarian state—the current unrest in Iraq involves a range of competing interest groups. Although Iraqi protesters share many of the same grievances that motivated other regional uprisings—corruption, economic hardship, and inadequate public services, among others—Ottaway and Barkey identified several features that distinguish Iraqi demonstrations from popular protests elsewhere in the Middle East.
- A multi-dimensional power struggle: Iraq’s tenuous governing alliance appears highly fragmented compared to the consolidated authoritarian governments that ruled Tunisia and Egypt, Ottaway said. As Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government seeks to diffuse growing unrest, it must also manage internal political tensions between Iyad Allawi’s secular Iraqiya coalition and Maliki’s own State of Law bloc. Ottaway predicted the protests may revive some of the same rivalries that hindered the formation of a unified government last year.
- Political infighting impairs governance: Competition between rival political factions has made it difficult for Iraq’s fragile governing coalition to address the material needs of its constituents. According to Ottaway, Iraq’s leaders are too preoccupied with promoting their own interests and careers to govern effectively. Widespread frustration with the government’s failure to provide essential services and electricity drove protesters to call for a “day of regret” on March 7—the one-year anniversary of the last parliamentary election—to express disappointment with the lawmakers they had chosen to represent them, Ottaway added.
- Confronting a new government: Whereas uprisings in Egypt and Libya have been aimed at overthrowing entrenched autocrats who have monopolized power for decades, protesters in Iraq are challenging a government that is less than six months old, Barkey noted.
- Small and localized protests: Unlike the massive protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square—where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians rallied for weeks on end—demonstrations in Iraq have been limited to hundreds or, at most, a few thousand protesters, Ottaway said.
Ramifications of the protests
Despite the relatively small scale of the protests in Iraq, the unrest has already produced several concessions from the government and rekindled latent rivalries between competing parliamentary blocs.
- Maliki’s concessions: In an attempt to diffuse growing unrest, Prime Minister Maliki responded to the protests in Baghdad by pledging to create more jobs, cutting his own salary in half, and giving his ministers a 100-day ultimatum to show demonstrable progress in stemming corruption and improving public services, Ottaway said.
- Deflecting blame: In addition to concessions, Maliki has attempted to deflect blame for dysfunctional public services onto regional councils and local governments, Ottaway added.
- Sadr’s referendum: After last year’s parliamentary election, loyalists of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tried to consolidate control over the country’s service-providing ministries, believing they could enhance their popularity by attending to the basic needs of citizens. But Ottaway explained that growing frustration with the poor quality of public services has become a political liability for the Sadrists. Moqtada al-Sadr is now seeking to shore up his legitimacy by ordering a popular referendum to gauge public opinion on the ministries’ performance.
- Fragmentation of the governing coalition: As public opposition escalates, members of Maliki’s parliamentary coalition are attempting to distance themselves from a government that has been criticized for its incompetence. New splinter factions are beginning to break away from existing blocs in order to differentiate themselves from a governing coalition whose legitimacy has been called into question. According to Ottaway, the recent withdrawal of eight MPs from the Iraqiya bloc to form a new White Party is an indication of these deepening rifts.
Kurdistan’s constrained opposition
Natali explained that protest movements in Kurdistan have been constrained by several limiting factors and are unlikely to pose a serious threat to the stability of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
- Weak opposition: According to Natali, a lack of awareness of citizenship rights and the absence of a strong civil society will prevent the Kurdish opposition from coalescing into a broad-based movement capable of transcending regional and socioeconomic differences.
- Fear of repression: In the cities of Irbil, Dohuk, and other strongholds of President Massoud Barzani’s authoritarian regime, pervasive fear of the powerful state security apparatus has prevented protests from materializing. Barzani’s government has effectively deployed propaganda and social media to intimidate the opposition. For example, Natali described an ominous horoscope recently published by a state-run newspaper that warned readers that their “destiny will be in danger” if they engage in protests.
- Rentier economy: The population of the Kurdistan region is very dependent on the Kurdistan Regional Government for employment, Barkey said. Of the 4.3 million inhabitants, more than one million are on the government payroll. This dependency is the greatest challenge facing the Kurdish government because it makes it difficult to create a productive economy. The KRG has used its 17 per cent share of the Iraqi of the national budget and national oil revenues to expand its bureaucracy and distributive mechanisms. The KRG currently allocates more than 75 percent of its revenues to public-sector salaries, and Natali argued that many Kurds are reluctant to jeopardize their paychecks by openly voicing opposition to the government that employs them.
- Geographically contained: According to Natali, protests have been almost exclusively confined to the city of Suleimaniya. The KRG has successfully prevented the spread of unrest to Irbil by setting up road blocks and preempted student activism by closing the city’s university for over a month. Barkey agreed with Natali, concluding that the localized nature of the unrest has shielded the KRG from the “contagion effect” that has contributed to the destabilization of other regimes in the Middle East.
- Lack of alternatives to the status quo: Kurdistan’s major opposition party, Goran, has provided a “refreshing jolt” to an authoritarian system, Barkey said. But while the party has offered ample and at times vitriolic criticism of the ruling KRG, it has failed to propose viable alternatives to the status quo. The reformist prime minister, Barham Salih, has been caught in the rivalry between his own party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), while he is simultaneously faced with the challenge of managing internal divisions within the PUK.
- Leadership change on the horizon? Barkey predicted that the critical moment for the KRG will come in October, when a decision will be made as to whether Salih continues as prime minister or the position reverts back to the KDP.
