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On October 1, 2019, young Iraqis took to the streets to protest corruption, ineffective government, and a lack of prospects. Initially, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdis government responded with deadly force. Iranian-backed militias fired into the crowds, killing at least 600. Crowds grew alongside Iraqis outrage at such tactics. Ultimately, Abdul-Mahdi resigned.

After several false starts, Iraqi political bosses settled on Mustafa al-Kadhimi, a former human rights researcher and journalist whom Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had appointed to lead the Iraqi National Intelligence Services (INIS) in 2016 against the backdrop of the fight against the Islamic State. For the Iraqi political elite, Kadhimi was a safe choice: He remained clean in a system where corruption predominated, had good ties with everyone from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and, at the INIS, proved himself a competent manager. As important for the political leaders who settled on Kadhimi as a transitional leader, he was boring. In a sea of flamboyant personalities, he was uncharismatic. He was also weak politically and had no permanent bloc of support in parliament.

Kadhimis authority instead rested on a mission: End Iraqs dysfunction, oversee fundamental reforms, and guide Iraq through new elections.

More than a year-and-a-half into his transitional leadership, Kadhimi failed.

Granted, the cards the system dealt him were always poor. Iraqs electoral system was long problematic. Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer and UN officials agreed to elections governed by both proportional representation and candidacy based on party lists rather than constituencies. Their goal: speed. But the long-term instability the system encouraged was obvious: candidates owed political survival to party bosses rather than accountability to constituents. As potential candidates sought to ingratiate themselves to the political bosses who would order the lists, they competed to be more ethnic chauvinist or sectarian than their peers. While Iraqis subsequently tinkered with the system to vote on a governorate rather than national basis, the same dynamic remained.

After the eruption of protests and Abdul-Mahdis resignation, President Barham Salih proposed core reforms that, if implemented, would have helped stabilize Iraq. Kadhimi did not use his bully pulpit or his moral authority to shepherd them through, however; Instead, parliamentarians elected under the old system that encouraged patronage and corruption eviscerated the reforms beyond any real meaning. Today, the same Iraqi political bosses engage in the same horse-trading that enriches and empowers themselves but abandons the Iraqis they claim to represent.

Kadhimi need not have been so weak. Even without a parliamentary bloc, he entered office at a tremendous moment with many ordinary Iraqis backing him as their last hope. At the same time, the traditional political elites backs were against the wall as the protest movement terrified them. He might have used that to his power, but Kadhimi squandered the opportunity as ambition took root. Resignation can be liberating, but Kadhimi wanted to remain. Reforms might antagonize the political leaders whose support he needed to remain in his position post-election and so rather than confront Barzani, for example, he approached him with obsequity. Rather than quash the practices that antagonize ordinary Iraqisfor example, the self-dealing and enrichment that comes with government officials rewarding themselves with land grant bonuses worth millions, Kadhimi continues the practice blind to the optics. Today, he has lost the street. Fully-geared riot police eying idle youth just outside the international zone is not a good look for a reformist.

The White House and intelligence community might appreciate Kadhimis promise to take on Iranian-backed militias but, behind the scenes, he has been nearly as permissive to them as his predecessors were. Demonstrations and even assassination attempts define redlines Kadhimi is loath to cross. The greater problem undercutting Kadhimis efforts to reign in such threats to Iraqi sovereignty is not fear, but ambition: To take on Iran too much would undercut his hope to win the approval of those political movements that Tehran backed. In effect, it was a game of charades in which rhetoric changed, but not reality.

Kadhimi says correctly that he entered office with one of the poorest hands of any recent prime minister. Abadi had focused his tenure on careful reform in order to build a base for investment and growth. Whereas in 2003, Iraq had a population of 25 million, by 2014 when he took over from Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqs population was approaching 35 million. Abadis chief of staff Naufel Alhassan warned presciently about the dangers caused by Iraqs inflated payroll and its inability to provide non-oil sector jobs.

Abdul-Mahdis team did not care. As oil prices increased, he tossed reforms out the window and handed out civil service jobs like candy. In just his single year in office, for example, his electricity minister added tens of thousands of jobs to the permanent payroll, with no sustainable way to pay for them and without any appreciable improvement in services.

Kadhimi had to scramble to make payroll in order to offset the shortfalls left him by Abdul-Mahdis incompetence, if not his teams theft. Today, Kadhimi often brags to visitors that he has increased the proportion of non-oil sector revenue, but his team tightly holds the numbers to back this claim; many Iraqi economists say it is just a line spun to assuage visiting diplomats and analysts. His government did inherit from Allawi and then release a detailed economic white paper which outlined sixty-four separate reform projects and highlighted what each ministry must do and under what timeline to achieve reform. While Kadhimi continues to pay lip service to reform, he hesitates to go further because to do so might antagonize the entrenched interests whose support he now wants as his mission shifts from reform to extending his tenure.

What saves Kadhimiand the system he headsis today not successful reform but high oil prices. Meanwhile, the population continues to grow. By 2025, Iraqi will have more than 45 million; by the end of this decade, it will surpass 50 million. There remains no real sovereign wealth fund nor reduction of the civil service to sustainable levels. Should the price of oil drop from $70 per barrel to $30, the system will crash. The question is now not if but when. Extraction of oil is becoming cheaper and new fields coming online each year. Chinas populationand thirst for oilwill soon peak given the demographic effects of more than three decades of its one-child policy. As Chinas population declines and with it the economic growth the demographic dividend brings, Beijing might also turn inward to fracking and other domestic energy sources. Nor does any of this discussion address the fact that a growing embrace of alternative energies undercuts the energy primacy that Iraq and its neighbors once enjoyed. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are all diversifying their economies; Iraqi leaders prefer to play political games for individual gain.

The events of October 2019 were a warning shot. Outrage motivated the protestors. They claimed Abdul-Mahdi as a victim but were willing to give Iraqs leaders a chance to reform. Kadhimi has now squandered that opportunity. As Iraqs population fast approaches the 50 million mark and Iraqi youth take to the streets again, they will not again accept that the problem was personality rather than system. The next revolution will be violent and will not differentiate much between parties. It will lead to a migration crisis, much like Iraqi Kurdistans kleptocracy faces, and a wholesale ouster of Iraqs current political leadership into early graves or exile. The Biden White House can continue to approach Iraqi politics like a game of musical chairs, but it is today missing the big picture.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. He also regularly teaches classes at sea about Middle East conflicts, culture, terrorism, and the Horn of Africa to deployed U.S. Navy and Marine units. You can follow him on Twitter: @mrubin1971.

Image: Reuters.

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Iraq's Dysfunction Will End in Revolution - The National Interest

The devastation caused by man to the environment is no longer a secret; nature is striking back painfully, after decades of warnings by scientists of a catastrophic future that requires quick, radical solutions. There is no more room for procrastination in the face of hurricanes, floods, rising temperatures, desertification, drying up of agricultural lands, forest fires, greenhouse gases and air pollution.

In recent years, the dangers of climate change top of the list of problems and preoccupations in most countries, whether in the first, second or third worlds. In the face of the wrath of nature, the borders separating countries are collapsing, with increasing rapidity in third world countries in particular. It is true that the catastrophic repercussions are affecting everyone, but the third world, including Arab states, bears the greatest burden. Not because the wrath of nature chooses it over America and Europe, of course, but for growing domestic and external reasons, through which disasters, whether natural or man-made, interact to increase the impact and size of any crisis affecting the people of the country.

READ: Iraq moves to sue Iran over water access

Iraq, along with Palestine, is a clear example of the environmental crisis resulting from war, occupation and neo-colonial policies in the Arab world, which undermine the social and economic basis of life in the region. The effects of this environmental crisis appear in devastating climate change, the pollution of extractive industries, the depletion of natural resources, the scarcity of water, and the pollution of air and soil due to the use of modern munitions, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous, as has been seen in Iraq and Gaza. It is estimated that the war against Iraq caused the release of 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2003 and 2007. That's more than 60 per cent of the total for all countries in the world.

Despite the availability of this data and its documentation by international human rights organisations, and the fact that the internal environmental situation is largely linked to the outside world, Iraq remained, until recent months, at the bottom of government and public lists of concerns. It is hardly mentioned except on the margins of international conferences or among the lists of "worst" countries in reports and statistics issued by UN bodies and organisations concerned with the environment and its economic and societal repercussions. Only then does it rank in a high position that no one else matches.

Iraq is stable at the top of the most corrupt countries in the world, and it tops the list of the most corrupt Arab countries. Iraqi President Barham Salih is unable to cover the financial loss from corruption in the country over the years. Iraq has lost hundreds of billions of dollars, including $150 billion smuggled abroad through lucrative deals since 2003, a figure that seems smaller when the dinar and dollar are compared, and the word "trillions" comes into play.

Iraq is also among the most dangerous countries according to the security risk index, competing with Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and Afghanistan. This is based on the documentation of the war and information on terrorism, infighting, insurgencies and politically motivated unrest. It was also the second deadliest country for journalists in 2020, according to Reporters Without Borders. Once-beautiful Baghdad, with its ancient civilisation, is not spared from inclusion in the list of the least clean cities in the world due to the neglect of the reconstruction of the buildings and structures that the occupation destroyed, as well as the infrastructure, including the sewage system, roads, water drainage and power plants.

In a recent report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Iraq ranked fifth in the list of countries most affected by climate change and global warming. The repercussions can be summed up in the lack of water safe for drinking and irrigation, the indiscriminate use of groundwater, and the lack of water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers due to the construction of dams upstream by Iran and Turkey, in violation of international agreements. This has caused agriculture to be abandoned and the displacement of rural populations to cities that were not prepared to receive them. The Norwegian Refugee Council declared last week that nearly half of the Iraqi population is in need of food assistance in the areas affected by drought.

Despite such evidence about climate and environmental change, and its repercussions on all aspects of life in Iraq, what passes for a government is still involved in corruption and fighting over the results of the recent election. At the same time, it boosts its media exposure by joining in the chorus of calls to protect the environment at international conferences, without ever taking any real action to do so itself. Iraq's Environment Minister, for example, spoke on the eve of the recent Glasgow Climate Summit about the catastrophic repercussions of climate change on food and water security. He failed to mention his government's shortcomings in the implementation of reform and development programmes to counter the impact of the crisis in Iraq.

OPINION: Will Iraq's election expose US-Saudi endorsement of Sadr's drive to impose a prime minister?

In order to understand the current environmental catastrophe in Iraq, it is necessary to consider the political situation, especially the fragmentation of the state into political blocs, which are fighting among themselves. This has stripped the state of any real power and central authority that would enable it to rebuild the infrastructure and put an end to sectarian and ethnic quota conflicts that are reflected in the distribution of resources. It has also caused the failure of the state to force neighbouring countries to respect Iraq's sovereign rights. This comes at a time when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has classified Iraq among the 44 countries in need of urgent foreign food aid.

The local and global causes of this tragic situation are known, with the failure to implement effective remedies about which so much has already been written and creating alternative provision. To this we must add the political and economic complicity of the local rulers with the colonial-imperialist countries; the encouragement of policies of silence, surrender and satisfaction with the tragic reality, instead of rejection and resistance; and the growing sense of regional and ethnic rather than national identity are all responsible for creating conflicts even among their victims, leading to socio-environmental conflicts over land, resources and livelihoods taking centre stage.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 20 December 2021

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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Why does Iraq top the lists of the world's 'worst' countries? - Middle East Monitor

A Calgary father who stashed his daughter in Iraq with his two wives so the child's mother would not have access to her has been sentenced to two years in jail, but with credit for the time he's already served has just one year left.

In May, Ali Al Aazawi was convicted of abduction in contravention of a court order by provincial court Judge Greg Stirling.

On Tuesday, after handing down the sentence, Stirling addressed Al Aazawi directly, imploring him to try to repair the relationship between his daughter, Zahraa, who is still in Iraq, and her mother, whose life has been "shattered" since her girl was taken more than three years ago.

"The most difficult part of this trial for me was to observe the effect that your conduct has had on Zahraa," said Stirling.

Zainab Mahdi initially consented to her then-10-year-old daughter taking a summer trip to an Egyptian resort in June 2018, with the plan of returning in September2018 with her father.

When he took her to Iraq, text messages between the girl and her mother showed Zahraa was initially scared and wanted to come home.

But by the time the trial took place earlier this year, nearly three years after Zahraa was taken to Iraq, she expressed that she did not want to return.

The judge found that once he was released on bail,Al Aazawi made"genuine efforts" to persuade his daughter to come back to Canada but she no longer wants to.

The girl appears to have been brainwashed and refused to leave, expressing what the judge described as "anger and bitterness" toward her mother.

"What I observed in my dealing with Zahraa is that she's very angry and my own experience is that most anger comes from somebody being very hurt," said Stirling.

"Most children need both their parents' love and I think what you can do to assure your daughter's happiness is you need to see if you can repair the damage between Zahraa and her mother."

In 2018, Al Aazawi took the girl to Iraq and left her with family so that he could have complete control over her education, Stirling found when convicting the father earlier this year.

Mahdi said goodbye to her daughter Zahraa on June 16, 2018. She hasn't seen her since.

When she first arrived in Iraq, Zahraa told her mother that her father had made plans for her to remain there for five years so she could attend school and learn the local culture and religion.

Mahdi said if she'd known that was the last time she'd see her daughter, she would have preferred to die.

Initially, Al Aazawi was in Iraq with Zahraa. There, police recorded a conversation between him and his ex-wife. During that conversation he said he would allow his daughter to return on the condition he have sole custody of Zahraa.

The day after police recorded that conversation, Al Aazawi flew back to Canada without his daughter. Police learned of his travel and arrested him at the Toronto airport.

In a victim impact statement, Mahdi also expressed worry that Zahraa believes she does not love her because she didn't go to Iraq to bring her home.

Mahdi said as a woman she had no power in Iraq to bring Zahraa back to Canada.

The mother has suffered from depression since her daughter's abduction to the point that she hasbeen hospitalized.

She said she is "never not lonely" and feels like a "dead person in an alive body."

Defence lawyer Balfour Der proposed a one-year sentence for his client, Ali Al Aazawi, while prosecutor Martha O'Connor asked the judge to send a message to stop other parents committing such egregious breaches of parental responsibilities.

Al Aazawi spent about eight months in jail before he was granted bail.

Stirling imposed a 28 month sentence but gave Al Aazawi four months of credit for the strict bail conditions he's been living under. The judge also gave him 388 days ofcredit for the time he served before getting bail.

That means Al Aazawi has 342 days left on his sentence.

Following trial, Al Aazawi was found not guilty of the more serious offence of international kidnapping, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

In law, the victim of the kidnapping offence charge is the child. Despite Zahraa's young age, Stirling could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that she travelled to Iraq against her will. There is no age limit on a youth's ability to consent.

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'She's very angry,' judge says of abducted child left in Iraq as dad sentenced to 2 years in jail - CBC.ca

A New Jersey high school teacher and Gulf War veteran who is battling breast cancer is taking to social media to spread hope.

Sandy Jessop, of Wall, served alongside her now-husband, Christian Jessop, during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004, then deployed again to Iraq in 2008.

The couple share three children together and are both high school teachers.

About one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandy -- a teacher at Freehold Regional High School -- was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"It was confirmed I have breast cancer on Saturday," she wrote in an Instagram post. "I expect a long hard road ahead of me. Here, I will document the journey. The good, the bad, the ugly ... but it will all be part of my road to a happy, healthy me, wife and mom of three."

A fellow veteran and friend of the family, Christa Recio, launched a GoFundMe for the family amid Sandy's cancer battle.

"[Sandy's] undoubtedly the kindest, most generous person I know and has a heart of gold," the campaign says. "When I see her circles of support, its because shes magnetic and radiates unicorn power."

Her Instagram page is a raw look into her journey.

"This week I thought a lot about allllllllll the energy thats been poured into me," she writes. "From everyone and everything, to save my life. From doctors and all the training theyve had, all the machines, all the medicines, all the therapists, all the nurses, surgical technicians, pharmacists, radiation technicians, and even the physicists that make the calculations for this proton machine.

"It all comes together perfectly to save little ol me and that is SO humbling ."

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Jersey Shore HS Teacher, Iraq War Vet Documenting Breast Cancer Battle On Instagram - Northern Highlands Daily Voice

By 2004, US troops in Iraq knew that the success of their invasion and defeat of Saddam Hussein's forces the year prior would be short-lived.

The disbanding of the Iraqi Army, Iran's regional aspirations, and the influx of foreign fighters made Iraq a ticking bomb. It didn't take long for a sectarian civil war to break out, and in the middle of it were US and Coalition troops.

A central part of the US-led counterinsurgency was a brutal counterterrorism campaign led by the US's elite Joint Special Operations Command. Army Delta Force commandos, Rangers, and other special-operations units would hit target after target every night in an attempt to dismantle the terrorist networks.

For the vast majority of their operations, they relied on an elite aviation unit.

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the "Night Stalkers," is the world's premier rotary-winged special-operations unit.

The Night Stalkers were formed in the early 1980s, after the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran led to reforms of US special-operations forces. Since then, they have participated in almost every US military operation.

With a motto of "Night Stalkers Don't Quit" and commitment to deliver their cargo anywhere in the world within a 30-second window, the unit introduced itself to the general public during the "Black Hawk Down" battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.

The 160th flies three main kinds of helicopters.

The AH-6 Little Bird gunship conducts attack missions, and its counterpart, the MH-6, does transport and assault operations. The MH-60 Black Hawk does transport or assault operations and a gunship version, the MH-60 Direct action penetrator, conducts attack missions. The MH-47 Chinook conducts transport and assault operations.

In March 2004, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Greg Coker and another Night Stalker were flying an AH-6 to support special-operations troops in Amiriyah, a suburb of Baghdad.

"We were conducting a daytime mission, the first one since the Battle of the Black Sea in Somalia, I believe," Coker told Insider, referring to the battle in Mogadishu.

A daylight mission was highly unusual, as Night Stalkers prefer to operate in the dark. As they were flying at a low level, an insurgent fired a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile, striking the Little Bird and bringing it down.

In the eight seconds it took for the Night Stalker pilots to hit the ground, Coker and his copilot performed an autorotation maneuver, which uses air flowing up through the main rotor to keep that rotor turning, allowing them to crash-land the burning chopper.

Upon impact, the AH-6 rolled end over end before coming to a halt. Fuel was leaking everywhere, and ammunition was going off, creating a recipe for disaster.

Not many pilots who crash in combat survive to tell the tale. For Coker, who spent 30 years in uniform and completed 11 combat tours, the moments after getting hit were the worst.

That was "a moment of defeat. Scary as hell. Sheer terror," Coker told Insider.

"An old gun [gunship helicopter] pilot told me many years ago that 'a superior gun pilot is one that uses his superior knowledge that will keep him out of situations where he will have to use his superior skill.' Your training takes over and you go to work, focusing on the things that you can control," said Coker, author of "Death Waits in the Dark."

US forces in Iraq were aware insurgents had shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and of the danger posed by those weapons, known as man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS.

That concern lurked around many military operations, and some civilian aviation activity, after a US covert-action program in the late 1980s armed Mujahideen in Afghanistan with FIM-92 Stingers to shoot down Soviet aircraft.

"There had been several helicopters shot down with a MANPAD in the area known as the Devil's Triangle or at least that is what I called it. This triangle was Fallujah to Ramadi to Amiriyah," Coker said, adding that no one in the other crashed helicopters had survived.

The standard operating procedure when an aircraft goes down is to try to rescue the pilots. Quick-reaction forces composed of units in the region and a combat-search-and-rescue element in the theater usually Air Force Pararescuemen and other Air Commandos would normally respond to a crash.

The Pentagon is pretty firm on that procedure and will often not approve operations that don't have a contingency plan for downed aircraft. During the initial days of the war in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense wouldn't authorize any operation, even with special-operations forces, before a combat-search-and-rescue team had been set up in Pakistan.

What is unique about Coker's experience is that moments after being shot down, and his copilot were back in the fight and going after the insurgents who almost killed them.

A reconnaissance element of Delta Force's B Squadron had quickly arrived on the scene, and in true Hollywood fashion, the dazed Night Stalkers joined them in a raid on the house from where the missile had been launched.

In the ensuing firefight, Coker killed the man who shot him down in what must be one of the war's unique moments.

"I was very angry after I was shot down. I had just lost an AH-6, and I wanted some payback. I wanted to find them and kill them. That's it," Coker said. "I also wanted to see if we could find some evidence to confirm or deny the type of system that shot us down. It felt good."

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.

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How a Night Stalker pilot teamed up with Delta Force in Iraq - Business Insider