Democracy in Iraq
Democracy in Iraq is a fledgling process, but Iraq achieved a more democratic approach than most surrounding countries. Iraq has a score of 3.51 of ten on the 2021 The Economist Democracy Index, which is considered authoritarian. Iraq scored 0.362 on the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index in 2023, ranking 3rd in the Middle East and 115th worldwide. Numerous wars, corruption, and civil and ethnic conflict in Iraq have made it difficult for a stable democratic government to emerge.
According to the Constitution of Iraq, the Iraqi government is a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. It is a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, as well as the President of Iraq, and legislative power is vested in the Council of Representatives. The Prime Minister of Iraq appoints the Council of Ministers, which acts as the cabinet.
History
Iraq historically had been under the rule of monarchs and dictators and had never been a democracy. For years, the Kurds had struggled for self-rule and independence from Iraq in what is known as the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict. In 1992, the Kurds formed their own government, the Kurdistan Regional Government.From 1831 to 1917 Iraq was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The British Empire defeated the Ottomans in 1917 and began ruling the country as the British Mandate of Iraq. Concerned at the unrest in the mandated country, the British decided to step back from direct administration and create a monarchy to head Iraq while they maintained the mandate. In March 1921, at the Cairo Conference, the British decided that a good candidate for ruling mandatory Iraq would be Faisal I because of his apparent conciliatory attitude towards the Great Powers and based on advice from T. E. Lawrence. Thus, Britain had imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Assyrians to the north. As a consequence, during the British occupation, the Shi'ites and Kurds fought for independence.
In 1932, the British granted independence to the Kingdom of Iraq. Faisal I ruled until his death in 1933, to be succeeded by his son, Ghazi I, and Ghazi's son, Faisal II.
In 1958, a coup d'état known as the 14 July Revolution was led by the Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. This revolt was strongly anti-imperial and anti-monarchical in nature and had strong socialist elements. Numerous people were killed in the coup, including King Faysal II, Prince Abd al-Ilah, and Nuri al-Sa'id. Qasim controlled Iraq through military rule and in 1958 he began a process of forcibly reducing the surplus amounts of land owned by a few citizens and having the state redistribute the land. He was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif in a February 1963 coup. After the latter's death in 1966, he was succeeded by his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, who was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became the first Ba'ath President of Iraq but then the movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council, then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was considered an authoritarian regime. The new regime modernized the countryside and rural areas of Iraq, mechanizing agriculture and establishing farm cooperatives. However, Hussein's ambition soon led him to be involved in various conflicts, with disastrous results to the infrastructure of Iraq. Hussein, a Sunni Arab, brutally repressed a Kurdish uprising during the Iran-Iraq war using chemical weapons and other indiscriminate means that killed 100,000-200,000 Kurds.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for allies in the middle east which resulted in Iraq signing a 15 year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union on 9 April 1972. According to historian Charles R. H. Tripp, the treaty upset "the US-sponsored security system established as part of the Cold War in the Middle East. It appeared that any enemy of the Baghdad regime was a potential ally of the United States."
American occupation (2003–2011)
A U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 ousted Saddam Hussein's administration, for the purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Soon, the promotion of democracy became a second stated goal for the U.S. in Iraq.From May 2003 until June 2004, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority governed Iraq, which as of July 2003 was assisted by the Iraqi Governing Council, consisting of tribal leaders appointed by the CPA to provide advice to the CPA provisional government. In June 2004 the sovereignty over Iraq was handed over again from the U.S. to an Iraqi Interim Government led by Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the Iraqi voters went to the polls in January 2005 to elect 275 MPs to the Iraqi Transitional Government's National Assembly. It was a transitory body tasked with writing the nation's constitution. A further election followed in December 2005 to select members of the permanent legislature.
These elections resulted in a "government of national unity"—which is a codeword for a government constructed along the muhasasa-system—in May, 2006, composed of the four largest parties in the 275-seat-Parliament: United Iraqi Alliance which included all major Shi'a parties; the Kurdistan Alliance consisting of the main parties of Iraqi Kurdistan; the Iraqi Accord Front consisting of Sunni Arab parties; and the Iraqi National List, a secular party composed of both Sunnis and Shiites. However, insurgent attacks and other violence were common and protracted the country's instability.
Until 2008, parliamentary elections in Iraq were generally free and fair, with a high voter turnout, but were frequently marred by violence. The president of the republic, who has little real powers but can function as an informal mediator between different political groupings, is also chosen by the parliament.
Despite spending billions to promote democracy in Iraq, the United States' attempt to form a democratic government there is largely considered a failure and has been called "democratic disillusionment." A 2011 study Costs of War from Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies concluded that democracy promotion has been flawed from the beginning in Iraq, noting as early as 2006 that "there were clear signs that post-Saddam Iraq was not going to be the linchpin for a new democratic Middle East." Corruption was rampant as the United States prepared to withdraw many of its combat troops.
2011 protests
In 2011, as an effort to prevent potential unrest, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that he would not run for a third term and called for a constitutional term limit. Nevertheless, hundreds of protesters gathered in several major Iraqi urban areas on 12 February demanding a more effective approach to the issue of national security and investigation into federal corruption cases, as well as government action towards making public services fair and accessible. The protests resulted in at least 45 deaths, including at least 29 on 25 February 2011, the "Day of Rage".War against the Islamic State (2013–2017)
The war by Iraq and its allies against the Islamic State has led to numerous human rights issues. Nearly 19,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in ISIL-linked violence between January 2014 and October 2015. ISIL executed up to 1,700 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets from Camp Speicher near Tikrit on 12 June 2014. The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL has led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidi people from their ancestral lands in northern Iraq.According to Newsweek, Amnesty International claimed that "Iraqi government forces and paramilitary militias have tortured, arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared and executed thousands of civilians who have fled the rule of the Islamic State militant group". The report, titled Punished for Daesh's crimes', alleges that thousands of Sunni men and boys have been forcibly disappeared by Iraqi government forces and militias.