This paper proposes an alternative approach to mobilizing support for institutional reform in Iraq – one that frames political ‘accountability’ in terms of leveraging the implicit social contract between the ruling elite and ordinary citizens.
On the evening of 27 November 2022, recently appointed Iraqi prime minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani stood at a podium in a room at the prime minister’s palace. He was surrounded by piles of cash, stacked taller than him. As he looked at the camera, he proudly reported that his government had recovered some $130 million (183 billion Iraqi dinars) that had been stolen in what Iraqis have called ‘the heist of the century’. Al-Sudani reassured watchers that this was just the start. He promised to recover the full $2.5 billion that had gone missing from the government’s tax authority during his predecessor’s administration. This message, al-Sudani hoped, relayed his government’s seriousness in pursuing reform in Iraq, a country ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world.
In the early days of the investigation, the authorities had appeared to make good progress. Numerous people were arrested, including a businessman, Nour Zuhair Jassim, who was alleged to own companies that had received some of the stolen money. Al-Sudani stated: ‘The investigative committees reached the conclusion that 114 cheques were issued to the accused Nour Zuhair (Abu Fatima) for a total amount of more than one trillion dinars, with 37 cheques for a total amount of 624 billion dinars being disbursed to Badia Al Masar Company.’
But within weeks of the investigation’s launch, some individuals were out of jail and back to conducting business across the country. When announcing the recovery of some of the cash, al-Sudani told the public that his government had made a deal with Jassim, who was released on bail in exchange for help finding and returning the stolen funds. Months later, documents from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) showed that the ministry had also ordered the lifting of the asset freeze on over 40 properties belonging to Jassim and members of his family.
While many Iraqis were surprised to discover that some of their tax money had been recovered, they were less surprised at the swift release of prominent figures alleged to have been implicated in the scandal. For many citizens, these events confirmed an impression that Iraq’s political system ensured impunity for the well-connected, and that for two decades since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq’s elite had continued to operate without significant accountability.
The US-led invasion and occupation in 2003 brought to Iraq some of the trappings of a liberal democracy, but it did not ensure the rule of law.
The US-led invasion and occupation in 2003 brought to Iraq some of the trappings of a liberal democracy – such as local and national multi-party elections and individual freedoms enshrined in a constitution – but it did not ensure the rule of law. Instead, a new ethno-sectarian power-sharing system provided opportunities for members of the country’s elite to capture the state and plunder its wealth, in many cases with impunity. Their ability to do this was aided by substantial control of the legal system, which was not only rendered less able to fulfil its role of ensuring accountability but also provided a means for some leaders to acquire greater power and repress political opponents.
The irony of the situation was that, on paper at least, Iraq had a system of governance designed to deliver accountability. That system still exists today, but it is not effective. ‘Accountability’ is defined in this paper as a process in which different groups in a multi-layered state – consisting of the elite, the government bureaucracy and the public – hold specific powers to regulate each other, limit the impunity of privileged interests, and uphold the rule of law. But this paper argues that contemporary accountability mechanisms in the Iraqi bureaucracy (i.e., the judiciary, the executive and government agencies, the legislature and the police) are unable to check members of Iraq’s post-2003 elite, many of whom have instead captured these mechanisms, which they then use to dominate the government and resist genuine reform. A similar dynamic hampers public accountability mechanisms (i.e., voting, media, civil society and protests), which instead are all too often taken over by members of the elite to dominate society and set the terms of the public discourse.
As a result, hundreds of organizers of reform programmes, across varying sectors, implemented by Iraqis (often with international partners) have concluded that a lack of political will is the ultimate barrier to their work. Despite rhetorical commitments to democracy, Iraq’s elite is resistant to meaningful economic, governance and security reform because change ultimately threatens its power and impunity. Given that an increase in political will around reform seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, this paper proposes an alternative approach to mobilizing support for reform, one that frames accountability in terms of leveraging the implicit social contract between the elite and ordinary citizens.
The idea is that, rather than seeking primarily to reform the technical capacities of state institutions themselves – which, as mentioned, in many cases already have accountability mechanisms but simply fail to apply them – a more effective approach could involve mobilizing public pressure. Critically, it would also involve connecting such pressure with the efforts of the isolated reformists who remain in the government and bureaucracy. This could help to amplify calls for more accountable behaviour on the part of members of the elite themselves.
To this end, this paper proposes the development of an ‘accountability working group’ to build connectivity between three key cohorts: reformists in government positions who have the technical know-how to manoeuvre within the bureaucracy; legal professionals with the ability to navigate the law and the courts; and influential leaders from civil society with the power to mobilize public opinion. The ultimate goal of such a working group would be to put greater pressure on Iraq’s elite to accept reforms in varying fields. The new accountability working group could run parallel to, and help drive, more technically focused reform efforts, which remain essential across critical sectors of the state.
The reality is that members of the Iraqi elite – regardless of their real commitment to reform – still need to engage with accountability mechanisms.
Such an approach, far from being wishful thinking, is arguably more feasible than well-intentioned technical approaches that have failed to address the political constraints arising from elite capture of the state. The reality is that members of the Iraqi elite – regardless of their real commitment to reform – still need to engage with accountability mechanisms. Most members of the elite publicly promote the idea of a liberal democracy and claim to be against corruption. As such, they give ideological power to principles that, in theory, could be used against themselves to demand more accountable rule. A Chatham House survey conducted across Iraq found that respondents hold low levels of trust in the government’s accountability mechanisms but still believe these same mechanisms should be used to uphold the rule of law (see Chapter 3, Figures 3–5).
In short, public pressure still matters to the ruling elite. Public outrage and a networked approach to reform have checked elite behaviour in isolated instances in the past. For example, in 2022 an Iraqi teenager, Haider al-Zaidi, was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for a tweet calling Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis, the late head of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a ‘spy’ instead of a martyr. In response, a public pressure campaign from civil society – including journalists writing articles and social media influencers using the hashtag ‘#Haider_al-Zaidi’ (#حيدر_الزيدي) – accompanied the efforts of reform-minded individuals in the government to have the sentence overturned. Officials lobbied inside their institutions and with lawyers and members of parliament (MPs), who pursued legal actions. Ultimately, this application of what might be termed ‘networked’ pressure led to the withdrawal of the sentence against al-Zaidi on 19 December 2022. The case suggests that building connectivity between civil society, lawyers, and reformists in government can help to push back against repression, offering a potential channel for the ‘elite accountability’ approach to reform articulated in this paper. While al-Zaidi’s case is an outlier, it offers a small glimpse into the networking potential of reform – if pursued under a concerted and coherent strategy.
About this paper
The rest of this paper explores the mechanisms of elite capture of the state in Iraq in more detail, and outlines ideas for addressing the governance challenges this creates. Chapter 2 defines the essential characteristics of – and differences between – the accountable state nominally enshrined in Iraq’s constitution and the reality of the ‘unaccountable state’ observed on the ground in Iraq today. Chapter 3 looks at accountability mechanisms in specific institutional sectors in turn: the judiciary, the executive and government ministries, the legislature, and the bureaucracy’s security structures. It outlines how institutions have become vulnerable to capture by elite interests, and how this has eroded trust in the state. Chapter 4 considers how civil society channels for promoting accountability, including the media, have often been used against the public rather than in its service and have thus constrained, rather than empowered, reform. Chapter 5 concludes by considering the limitations of previous capacity-building programmes, and by making the case for the above-mentioned reframing of accountability. In particular, the chapter proposes the creation of a project for an accountability-focused network or working group, drawing predominantly on domestic Iraqi stakeholders.
