Back up to jump better could be the adage of the day in Iraq. After Moqtada al-Sadr’s three failed attempts to form a government, Moustafa al-Kazimi finally has a successor as prime minister, Mohammed Chia al-Soudani. His government was approved by the deputies, Thursday, October 27 in the evening, twelve months after the early legislative elections of October 2021.
Married and father of four children, this 52-year-old Shiite, former minister of human rights of Nouri Al Maliki (2010-2014) comes from the ranks of the pro-Iranian alliance of the Coordination Framework, the political branch linked to the powerful militias of Hachd al Chaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) under the sponsorship of Iran.
He obtained the confidence of Parliament by rallying the support of the two main Kurds (4 positions in the government are offered to them) and of the Sunni bloc of Mohammed al-Halboussi, President of Parliament, who obtains 6 Moroccans. One post will go to Christians. Twelve to the Coordinating Framework. Of the 23 ministries, only 3 women are at their head.
The shadow of Maliki and Iran
This birth of the early election of October 2021 took place in pain. The cards of the political game have not ceased to be reshuffled for months. Because behind Mohammed Chia al-Soudani, the real winner and new strongman of Iraq is called Nouri Al Maliki, pro-Iranian Shiite and Prime Minister from 2006 to 2014.
Enemy of the nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, he managed to put the latter out of the game, despite an unfavorable balance of power in parliament (respectively 38 deputies against 73 out of 329). To the point of pushing Moqtada Sadr to the fault.
In June, Sadr forced his deputies to resign, counting on the weight of the streets to regain power. In late August, after Moqtada Sadr announced his retirement from politics, the Sadrists took over the presidential palace and attacked government institutions in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The response of the Iraqi deep state through the militias of the Hachd al Chaabi showed that Maliki and especially Iran were the true masters of the clocks. Result: more than 30 dead and 600 wounded among the Sadrists.
“With more than 80 militias and 165,000 heavily armed militiamen, 125 billion in revenue a year from Iraq, control over the ministries of interior, defence, finance and intelligence services, how does the power could escape Iran remarks sociologist Adel Bakawan.
The promise of new elections to safeguard civil peace
The October 2019 so-called Tishreen revolt was not enough to overthrow this deep state either. The united Iraqi youth will have had a good time demanding true democracy and denouncing the bankruptcy of the state, guilty in their eyes of generalized corruption, degradation of public services, mass unemployment and communal tensions… The repression that is taking place followed, with 600 dead, 21,000 injured and 29,000 arrests, was already orchestrated by these same militias.
For the director of the French Center for Research on Iraq (CFRI), ” the young people of Tishreen are resigned, tired. Conditions have not improved. Quite the contrary. And yet people no longer go out to demonstrate. On October 25, to celebrate the three years of their movement, they were only a few hundred in the street in Baghdad.
Aware of his fragile position, Mohammed Chia al-Soudani is trying to show his credentials. He says he wants to fight systemic corruption, diversify the economy, fight mass unemployment and restore public services.
He, like the new president Abdel Latif Rashid, could, above all, not stay long at the head of Iraq. The new Prime Minister promises new elections within a year. This, in the hope of easing tensions and satisfying the movement of October 2019, but also the supporters of Moqtada Sadr who had in common to have thought, wrongly, to take power at the end of these elections.