BAGHDAD AND DUBAI — IN NORMAL times Iraq’s parliament can be a desolate place: many MPs do not bother to show up for work. Today it is full—though far short of a quorum. On July 30th supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, a cleric and politician, stormed parliament. They have settled in for what they promise will be an open-ended sit-in. Volunteers have been bringing meals and tea; juice vendors roam the aisles. For once, MPs have a legitimate reason for staying at home.
Iraq has been without a proper government for almost ten months, the longest period of paralysis since 2005; Mustafa al-Kadhimi has been hobbling along as the caretaker prime minister. Such deadlocks are nothing new. But the events of the past week have pushed the country in an ominous direction. Mr Sadr has urged more Iraqis to join the sit-in, while his opponents have started counter-protests nearby. The political crisis in the world’s sixth-largest oil producer risks boiling over into violent conflict.
The Sadrists emerged from October’s elections with the largest bloc in parliament, winning 74 of 329 seats. They spent the next few months trying to form a government that would exclude their Shia Muslim rivals, chief among them Nuri al-Maliki, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2014 and dreams of a comeback. Mr Sadr instead sought a coalition with the main Kurdish party and a Sunni Muslim grouping led by parliament’s speaker. But Mr Sadr failed to muster enough support.
In June he told his MPs to resign. The move made little sense on its face, as it threw away his power in parliament. One former official described it as “madness”. But it cast him as an outsider, with an implicit threat of violence: he would wait for his rivals to form a government, then unleash his supporters if he disliked the outcome.
After parliament was stormed, Mr Maliki was photographed brandishing a rifle as he walked the streets of Baghdad, flanked by armed men. Talk of duelling protests raises the spectre of intracommunal bloodshed. In years past, Qassem Suleimani, a powerful Iranian general, would have flown to Baghdad to try to rein in his allies. Since America assassinated him in 2020, though, Iran has exercised less control. Still, should Mr Sadr and his rivals come to blows, the Iranians will surely side against him. The Sadrists lack serious foreign support.
A series of leaked recordings, said to be of a conversation involving Mr Maliki, whose faction won the third-largest bloc in the election, has added to the tumult. He called Mr Sadr a traitor and claimed there was a British plot to install him in power. Mr Maliki insists the recordings are faked; many of the ramblings they contain are absurd. Britain is entangled finding its own new prime minister, let alone able to foist one on Iraq.
Mr Maliki could also be heard trashing the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces), a constellation of Shia militias supported by his allies which he called cowards. That probably ended his already slim chances of becoming prime minister. On July 25th Mr Sadr’s rivals nominated Muhammad al-Sudani, a journeyman ex-minister, for the prime minister’s job. His position is weak, since his parliamentary list won just one seat in October, so he would be merely a figurehead for the powerful Shia parties behind him.
Some of Mr Sadr’s backers try to cast the siege of parliament as a principled stand. For a start, they say, the cleric wants to diminish Iran’s influence in Iraq. While not quite hostile to Iran, Mr Sadr positions himself as a nationalist not beholden to foreign powers: he uses the slogan “neither east nor west” to describe his preferred government. His Shia rivals, on the other hand, are undeniably in thrall to Iran.
Mr Sadr’s defenders also talk of overhauling a broken political system by changing the constitution and electoral law, perhaps shifting Iraq from a parliamentary regime to a presidential one. “The only way to make sense [of his withdrawal] is to bring down the political system,” says one senior official. Such talk may resonate with Iraqis frustrated by corruption and dismal services. But burning the system to save it rarely yields sparkling results.
For all their protestations, however, Mr Sadr’s camp can hardly claim the moral high ground. Iraq’s political crisis does not stem from a thoughtful debate over the best system of governance. Rather it is fuelled by politicians who see control of the state as a zero-sum scramble for patronage and wealth.
Mr Sadr draws his support from impoverished Shia communities in southern Iraq and the slums of Baghdad. His movement needs tens of millions of dollars a month to finance its patronage network. To that end his henchmen have taken key jobs in the ministries of the interior and defence, the state oil and electricity firms, and the central bank. Wide control over Iraq’s annual budget of $89bn lets the Sadrists steer spending to loyalists.
Parliament has yet to pass a budget for 2022, which means it cannot spend billions of dollars in extra oil revenue accumulating at a time of high prices (see chart). In June, however, it did pass an emergency spending bill backed by Mr Sadr’s MPs before they resigned. It was framed as a food-security programme at a time of soaring prices, and it did include dollops of money to pay for food and imports of fuel. But it also added tens of thousands of new public-sector workers—many of whom will probably be hired from among Mr Sadr’s constituents.
The Sadrists may yet back down, realising this is a fight they cannot win. Other lawmakers will try to broker a face-saving exit. Even if that happens, though, the next government is likely to be short-lived. Far from ending Iraq’s political crisis, Mr Sadr’s antics are likely to deepen it.
By The Economist
