Iraq at the Ballots

On Nov. 11 Iraqis went to the parliamentary election ballots to determine who gets the 329 seats on Iraq’s Council of Representatives. 

Following their loss in the 2021 legislative elections four years ago, supporters of Iran-backed parties attempted to storm the government buildings within the Green Zone in Baghdad. This led to violent clashes between security forces and protestors, leaving 125 individuals injured and two dead. On Nov. 7 two days after the attempted storming, Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi survived a drone attack. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, however, Iraqi governmental sources state that Iran backed militias were responsible. The violent clashes were then followed with an eleven-month-long political crisis where members of the Council of Representatives were unable to form a functioning coalition government and therefore elect a president. Demonstrators supporting the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had stormed the Parliament building in the Green Zone in order to stop the nomination of anti-Iran al-Sudani for Prime Minister. In August, another series of clashes took place in Baghdad, pitting al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric, against pro-Iranian militias. The clashes in August left 30 people dead and over 700 injured. Following violent protests in Baghdad, the Parliament chose Abdul Latif Rashid as the new President of Iraq, who then tasked Al Sudani with forming a government. 

This year’s elections saw an unexpectedly high 56.11% participation rate, an increase of 12.81% from the 2021 elections where many politicians threatened boycotts over claims of corruption, perhaps signaling an increased confidence in the democratic process in Iraq. However, Erika Solomon and Falih Hassan of the New York Times note that “though the stakes are high, public confidence in Iraq’s democratic process is low, with nine million eligible Iraqis not even registering to vote [...]”. Ihsan al-Shammari, a political scientist at Baghdad University,mentioned in the same article, states that “This is intentional obfuscation of participation to boost their [the election’s] legitimacy”.

Another attack on the legitimacy of the elections were the claims by various parties that “vote-buying” had taken place. The AP reported that “Last week, security services arrested 46 people accused of illegally buying and selling voter cards in sting operations in several provinces, and some 1,841 cards in their possession were seized.” Previous elections in Iraq were also riddled with claims of “vote-buying”, showing a trend in the apparent illegitimacy of Iraqi elections. 

The counting of votes was largely completed the following day, with projections showing Prime Minister al-Sudani’s party at first with 46 seats out of 329 in the Parliament and 12.06% of the popular vote. Following him in the popular vote was Masoud Barzani with 10.09% of the vote translating to 26 seats. However, the party with the second most seats in the parliament was the State of Law Coalition led by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Prime Minister al-Sudani will now need to get into coalition talks, which may take many months, all while trying to navigate both American influence demanding the dismantling of Iranian militias and Iranian groups who listen to Tehran more than Baghdad. 

In order to cozy up to the Americans, al-Sudani presented himself as a “tough-on-Iran” Prime Minister throughout the electoral process, and reiterated his commitment to rid the country of foreign influence following the announcement of votes. Still, 22 years after the American-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, the country’s politics remain to be dominated by the Shiite-majority, many parties of whom are still close to Iran (al-Sudani, an Iraqi Shia, and his party is a notable exception). These parties are now threatened by louder calls from the United States, highlighting the “urgency in disarming Iran-backed militia”.  

Another aspect of his character that al-Sudani reinvented for his elections was his characterization as a businessman, an attempt to appeal to President Trump. In order to succeed in gaining Trump’s favor, al-Sudani oversaw several deals with American oil giants and has vowed to encourage Iraqi billionaires to invest in the United States. In return, he has received promises of decreased American military presence in Iraq, with only a small number of soldiers to remain in order to ensure the Islamic State doesn’t pose any threats. 

The Iraqi Parliament will start attempting to form a government in the coming weeks, and their success, or lack of, will once again leave its mark on Iraq’s uneasy experiment with democracy after the American invasion.