Rage Comes to Baghdad http://www.foreignaffairs.

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March 3, 2011
SNAPSHOT

Rage Comes to Baghdad

Will Iraq's Recent Protests Lead to Revolt?

Raad Alkadiri
RAAD ALKADIRI is a Partner at PFC Energy. He was Assistant Private Secretary to the
United Kingdom Special Representative to Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and Political Adviser to
the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Iraq from 2006 to 2007. The views expressed here
are his own.

Saddam Hussein may have been overthrown in 2003, but the dawn of more representative
government in Iraq has not inoculated the country from the popular unrest now sweeping
through the Arab world. Over the past month, demonstrations protesting the woeful lack of
services and widespread corruption have taken place throughout the country. These
culminated in a violent “day of rage” in a number of Iraqi cities, including one in Baghdad
on February 25 that left more than 20 protesters dead.

These protests have not reached the scale of those witnessed in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia,
and demonstrators have not demanded regime change per se. Nonetheless, the tight
security measures taken to contain the “day of rage” protests in Baghdad -- including
blocking access to the city and putting a tight military cordon around Tahrir Square, the
focal point of the demonstrations -- and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to link the
unrest to al Qaeda and Baathist provocateurs suggest that his government is rattled. And
with good cause, because if Baghdad cannot respond effectively to popular demands, the
current government’s political survival is no less at stake than those in Cairo, Tripoli, and
Tunis.

Although there is undoubtedly an element of contagion influencing events in Iraq, which

began with small demonstrations in Baghdad led by intellectuals and professionals, the
protests there are driven by local grievances. Popular anger at the persistent lack of
services -- especially electricity -- has been rising steadily over the past few years.

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Demonstrations protesting power shortages occurred in Basra last summer, expressing a

frustration common to Iraqis across the country; some parts of Baghdad, for example,
received around two hours of electricity per day from the national grid in early February.
Iraqis also share growing resentment toward pervasive government corruption, a factor
that has been particularly important in driving demonstrations against the regional
administration in Kurdistan. Iraq ranked 175 out of 178 countries on Transparency
International’s 2010 corruption index. Meanwhile, there is broad resentment of the high
salaries and generous benefits that public officials have granted themselves, especially
given the government’s apparent ineptitude.

None of these grievances is new; Iraqis have complained about poor services and
unresponsive government since the U.S. invasion in 2003. But in the bloody, chaotic years
that followed Hussein’s fall, security was the biggest popular concern. Now that levels of
violence have diminished, Iraqis’ patience with their government’s inadequacies is wearing
thin.

Iraq’s leaders were slow to recognize this simmering popular frustration. In the early days
of unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, Iraqi officials were blasé and almost smug, lecturing their
Arab counterparts on the need for democratic government and dismissing the chances of
similar disturbances in Iraq. The warnings that were issued over the risk of domestic
turbulence had a clear political bent and seemed to be aimed more at casting aspersions on
Maliki’s leadership than anything else.

Consequently, Baghdad was caught unawares when protests did break out in the capital
and in cities such as Mosul in early February, and its initial response was rather panicked.
Following a now well-trodden path, Maliki announced on February 5 that he would not seek
reelection for a third term, only for his official spokesman to claim a day later that the
prime minister had been misquoted. Maliki, his cabinet ministers, and members of the
Council of Representatives also discussed slashing their salaries. As a temporary measure
to compensate for the poor state of services, the government pledged free electricity for
approximately one million of Iraq’s poorest families. Maliki also promised that every person
would be given 15,000 dinars (roughly $13) as compensation for deficiencies in the
national ration card system, a program to supply basic foodstuffs that was first introduced
by Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, when Iraq was under international sanctions.

Faced with continuing protests, the government followed up with a slew of other initiatives,
including shifting spending priorities in the 2011 budget. The state will double its spending
on the national ration card and increase capital spending on infrastructure projects at the
expense of current spending (although its room for maneuver is limited, as the latter is
dedicated mostly to salaries and wages). Most government officials have escaped salary
reductions for the moment, but the prime minister, president, and speaker of the Iraqi
parliament will assume 20 percent pay cuts. To address energy concerns, Maliki separately
announced that factories will be removed from the national electricity grid between May and

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September to divert more power to households, and he has proposed a plan to distribute
small generators to villages to supplement patchy national distribution.

These proposals have yet to mollify the protesters. And although the initiatives look good
on paper, the government faces a steep challenge in implementing them. Twenty years of
war, sanctions, and invasion have hamstrung the fledgling Iraqi government. Maliki must
confront a debilitating set of political and administrative weaknesses that severely
undermines his government’s capacity to design and implement policy. Maliki himself has
been the first to acknowledge that his new cabinet, much like its predecessor, sacrifices
effectiveness for political inclusiveness. All the main parties and blocs in the Council of
Representatives are represented in the new government -- including Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya
party, which narrowly defeated Maliki in last year’s elections -- largely because the factions
feared being marginalized in opposition. But they have not committed to a common
program, and political differences among them remain stark. Maliki may have secured his
post by outmaneuvering his opponents, but his actions merely increased their distrust of
him -- and, in some cases, their determination to weaken and even unseat him.

Compounding these political problems is the diminished capability of Iraq’s public service
ministries. The overall quality of the country’s civil servants has steadily deteriorated over
the past eight years. Although violence and de-Baathification have taken a toll, time itself is
an enemy. Iraq’s most capable technocrats -- many of whom came from the last generation
to be educated abroad in the mid-1980s -- have passed retirement age. Many of the
current senior civil servants are simply out of their depth, having suffered through years of
isolation under sanctions and having been promoted rapidly, as a result of political
connections or the need to fill the leadership vacuum. Moreover, they are forced to operate
in ministries that -- particularly in the case of service branches -- have become political
fiefdoms serving party or constituency interests rather than the country at large. Such
provincialism results in little or no coordination between ministries and undermines the
capacity for broad strategic planning and implementation -- both of which are necessary to
solve the country’s infrastructure and services deficits.

None of this is to suggest that Iraq is on the brink of collapse. With continued oil revenues
-- conservatively estimated at around $70 billion this year but liable to rise if crude oil
prices remain at their current elevated levels -- the government will retain a powerful
means of increasing social spending and, more important, protecting the crucial patronage
networks relied on by various ruling parties to preserve their influence. At the very least,
these funds will help the government maintain the status quo.

But the threats posed by the protest should not be underestimated. It is possible that the
shock of the protests, combined with the impending loss of the safety net that U.S. troops
have provided for the past eight years, will force Iraq’s leaders to assume greater
responsibility. This shift would not immediately change conditions on the ground, but it
could improve the government’s administrative capacity and nudge it toward more realistic

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and manageable policies to address Iraq’s social and infrastructure challenges.

Or, more worringly, Iraq’s dearth of administrative and technocratic capabilities could
remain an obstacle to implementing even small-scale government initiatives. Worse still,
Maliki’s rivals may begin to try to take political advantage of the current protests. Leaders
from across the political spectrum sense the opportunity, and some, Iraqiya, are already
hinting at a parliamentary vote of no confidence against the prime minister. The Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr’s call last week for his followers to give the government a six-month grace
period in which to improve services seemed to provide Maliki with some respite, especially
as the Sadrists are a key government ally, representing some of the poorest and potentially
most disruptive parts of Iraqi society. But even this reprieve has been temporary. Sadr and
his lieutenants have joined a chorus of attacks on the prime minister sung in recent days by
many of the other major parties. The fact remains that Maliki has made a host of enemies
among rival political blocs over the past five years, all of whom would be happy to see him
fall.

Consequently, unless conditions improve in Iraq, Maliki may face the unpalatable choice of
allowing himself to be replaced or clinging to power through authoritarian means. It is by
no means clear that he will choose the former. As he showed during the nine months of
painful negotiations over government formation last year, he will not yield power easily, and
his reaction to the recent “day of rage” was a reminder of his authoritarian streak. In the
time-honored fashion of Arab strongmen, the prime minister has sought to establish
personal control over Iraq’s security services over the past few years, and his instinctual
response to the latest crisis has been to consider further centralizing his control by
establishing overseers for each ministry based in his office and appointing special
representatives in the ministries themselves.

Such actions would have a corrosive impact on the country’s representative politics. Iraqis
have already shown unmistakable signs of disillusionment with the new order. Voter
participation has dropped over the last five years -- official turnout fell from 79.6 percent in
2005 to 62.4 percent last year -- and many of those who did vote in last year’s general
elections expressed their frustration with business-as-usual politics through a clear
anti-incumbency vote for Allawi’s Iraqiya party. The fact that incumbents -- Maliki chief
among them -- were largely able to protect their power and prerogatives simply widened
the chasm between Iraq’s rulers and its ruled. The Maliki government’s failure to respond
effectively to the latest protests will expand that gap further. An Egypt- or Tunisia-style
revolution is not in the cards for Iraq -- at least not yet. But if Iraqis are forced to endure
another hot summer without sufficient electricity supplies, protests will continue and
pressure on the government will grow. Worse yet, the Iraqi people may lose faith altogether
in electoral politics, which would put not just Maliki’s future at risk but also the stability of
the entire post-2003 political order.

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