Colonel David Williams is the chief coalition liaison with Kurdish forces in the north. The coalition has provided intensive training for years to the Peshmerga, the Kurdish security forces, equipping them with high-level military gear and, some say, helping them turn a mountain militia into a well-honed and modern fighting force.
They do the same for the Iraqi army; the country's top counter-terrorism force was founded by U.S. Special Forces, and multiple branches of the security forces have been trained by them; while the pandemic ended in-person training, the regular equipment handouts continue.
The Iraqi government says the country's armed forces, who were swiftly overpowered when ISIS swept through much of Iraq in 2014, are now ready to fight the country's multiple security threats alone. Others aren't so sure.
Peshmerga General Sirwan Barzani has worked hand-in-hand with the coalition for years; he says local forces couldn't manage in a year what foreign forces can do in a few days.
AROUND NOON on June 9th, a sudden hubbub echoed through the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala. Qassem Musleh, a militia boss who had been arrested two weeks earlier on suspicion of murder, was free and visiting one of Shia Islams holiest sites. A happy crowd surged around him as he walked out into the blazing sun. Some did not even stop to retrieve their shoes, and scorched their feet on the street. Your correspondent squeezed into the throng for a brief interview. They had no proof, crowed Mr Musleh.
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For many Iraqis, his release was a sad reminder of how weak their state is. Prosecutors had accused him of ordering the assassination of a campaigner against corruption and Iranian influence. When Mr Musleh was arrested, his gun-waving supporters promptly occupied parts of the Green Zone, where Iraqs central government is based. Rather than risk a bloody confrontation, the state released him.
Iraq is preparing for elections in October. It will be a huge task to ensure they are free, says President Barham Salih. The UN has been invited to supervise. Thirteen main factions are jostling for power. Seven are Shia, four Sunni Arab and two Kurdish. Two broad coalitions of Shias, Kurds and Sunnis will probably emerge from the mix: one leaning towards Iran; the other towards America and the Sunni Gulf states. Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the prime minister (a position more powerful than president), may get a second term if the factions are convinced that he is pliable.
However, Iraqis wonder how much authority the government they elect will actually have. Many fret that, no matter who wins, the shots will really be called by militias, tribes, corrupt factions and foreign powers. Many plan to boycott the ballot. Five young men in a restaurant in Basra, a southern city, sum up the mood. All supported the huge anti-establishment protests that rocked the country in 2019. Two show off scars from having been beaten by militiamen. None plans to vote. I want a country, says Nabil, a civil servant with a nasty truncheon injury.
Like many Iraqis, he frets that his motherland is tugged and battered by forces beyond the governments control. Qassem Suleimani, one of Irans top generals, used to visit regularly to help organise Iraqs Shia militias. America, which still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, killed him with a drone strike last year as he left Baghdad airport. The charred wreckage of his car is now mounted on a pedestal near where he died. It is one of the first things visitors see, along with countless billboards of Suleimanis face, and that of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia commander who died with him.
Scores of militias, most of them Shia, are collectively known as the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces). They played a crucial role in vanquishing the torture-broadcasting Sunni jihadists of Islamic State (IS), who once controlled a third of Iraqi territory. But after IS was defeated in 2017, the militias did not disband. On the contrary, they have won public funding: 2% of GDP last year. Thus, the government bankrolls private military forces of dubious loyalty with a lavishness many formal armies would envy. (Iraqs gets 4%.)
We always follow the prime ministers orders, says Sheikh Abdul Zahra al-Ghanim, the spiritual leader of the Hashds 10th brigade. But the pictures on his wall are of Suleimani and Ali Khamenei (Irans supreme leader). Abu Fatima al-Basri, who runs the martyrs centre where Mr Ghanim is sitting, lets the mask slip: On religious matters, we follow Ayatollah Khamenei; on earthly matters, we follow the prime minister. And if their instructions were to conflict? Our faith is above the prime minister, he says.
Mr Basri adds that he would like the Hashd to become like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. For many Iraqis, this is a horrifying prospect. Irans elite force answers to the top cleric, not the president, and runs a vast, corrupt business empire.
The Hashd already control some ministries, and make tidy sums from extortion and smuggling. Resentment against Iran and its proxies is widespread. Protesters set fire to the countrys consulate in Karbala last month. Others burned a Hashd office in Nasiriya last year. Soot still daubs the walls. The attacks were paid for by outside forces, claims one of the staff there. Such conspiracy-mongering is rife.
The prime ministers men say they are gradually curbing militia power. Last month Mr Kadhimi issued a report claiming that the government had impounded 1,700 missiles in the past year, but it did not say from whom. A plan was proposed to merge the Hashd with the army and pension off many of its members. It has gone nowhere. One of its more vocal advocates, Hisham al-Hashimi, was murdered last year. Many Iraqis have lost faith in the prime minister. When he visited Nasiriya on June 12th, protesters pelted his motorcade with sandals.
A state is supposed to serve its citizens. The Iraqi state, however, serves its employees. In a normal year, pay and pensions for public-sector workers gobble up two-thirds of the budget. Last year, when oil prices were low thanks to covid-19, they swallowed an estimated 122% of Iraqs oil revenues, which are the states only big source of income. Civil-service bonuses and perks are not taxed, so civil servants are mostly paid in bonuses and perks. Police get extra for standing guard in risky areas; professors, for lecturing. The government pays more money, more reliably, for less work, than any private firm. So everyone wants to work for the government, observes Ali Allawi, the finance minister.
Parties take over ministries and dish out jobs to their supporters and their cousins. Merit barely merits a mention. When I say I dont belong to a party, they wont even let me apply for a job, says a young oil engineer in Basra. (He plans to emigrate.) When a huge portion of public workers stayed at home during the pandemic, there was no effect on output, sighs Mr Allawi. And this is not because they were furiously working remotely. Some 10% of them, he says, are ghost workers.
Efforts to trim the public payroll, so that there might be cash left over for schools, roads, hospitals and so on, meet fierce resistance. Iraqs 4.5m public employees and 2.5m pensioners in an adult population of roughly 20m are a gigantic interest group that politicians fear to defy.
The other big drain on the public purse is subsidies, on such things as food and electricity. Energy subsidies (largely in the form of free oil to generate power) run to $17bn a year, or 10% of GDP. This makes electricity cheap; even so, few Iraqis pay their bills. Officials take bribes to overlook this. Politicians are reluctant to upset either group. Because electricity is in effect free, demand is uncontrolled, says Mr Allawi. Go to any squatter settlement, everyone has air-conditioning. Except during power cuts, which are common.
If Iraqis had to pay their bills, they would waste less. Iraq would find it easier to keep the lights on. In a pilot scheme in Zayouna, a Baghdad suburb, a private firm collected payments for electricity. Residents and local businesses found they actually saved money, because there were fewer power cuts and they spent less on costly diesel generators. But such reforms may take time to catch on.
To generate more power, Iraq imports Iranian natural gas. Because of American sanctions on Iran, paying for this is complicated: Iraqi dinars must be placed in an escrow account, which can then be used to buy food and medicine. Iran would rather have cash, but this will not be allowed unless international talks about its nuclear programme yield an agreement. Iraq has often failed to pay what it owes, prompting Iran to curb supplies.
Ironically, Iraq produces plenty of gas, which bubbles out of its oil wells. But most is flared (ie, burned on the spot) or released into the atmosphere. This is environmentally irresponsible and economically daft. Were the gas to be captured, it could replace Iranian imports entirely.
Some firms are trying. Basrah Gas Co, a joint venture between the state, Shell and Mitsubishi, has since 2013 gone from capturing gas equivalent to 50,000 barrels of oil a day to 210,000. Work has begun to capture 100,000 barrels more. Technically none of this is complicated, says Malcolm Mayes, the managing director. The difficulty has been making sure the government pays what it owesessential for a project that requires hefty upfront investment. After some hiccups, the firm has worked out a deal whereby payment is secured with oil, and is pressing ahead.
The fossil-fuel industry can never be a big employer. And that irks many Iraqis. The tribes from whose land the fuel is pumped insist that as many jobs as possible are given to their members. The tribes next door tend to miss out. On a tiny island in the marshes near Basra, surrounded by water buffaloes, Noaman al-Salmi grumbles about the blazing flare on the horizon, and the pollution that falls like mist. We get no jobs, he says, only cancer.
Beset by pious gunmen, some Iraqis have grown disillusioned with religion itself. Imams bemoan their dwindling congregations. The countrys top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has stopped giving weekly sermons. Iraqis speak of a rising nationalism that eschews foreign interference, especially Irans.
Respect for human rights is still lacking. Sunni Arab dissenters are treated as terrorists and have largely been silenced. Shia ones fear assassination. The prime minister promised to arrest the thugs who killed more than 560 protesters last year. But a year of investigations has yet to result in a single prosecution, says the UN.
Some perspective is in order. This country has seen devastation no other country has seen, says Mr Salih: dictatorship, genocide, invasion and a blood-drenched caliphate. Building a state that can govern Iraq needs a lot of work, he says. Still, there are signs of progress.
The main reason for optimism is that the country, though still violent, is less so than at any point since the American-led invasion in 2003. The last big car bomb was in 2017. Tribal feuds are still common, but the sound of gunfire in cities is fading.
Iraq is also opening up. Visas that once took months are now available on arrival. Traffic flows through checkpoints more easily than before. The economy is rebounding from covid-19. Having plummeted by 10% last year, it will grow by 2% this year and 8.4% in 2022, predicts the World Bank. The budget assumes an oil price of $45 a barrel; it is around $70, so the fiscal deficit should shrink from 5.5% of GDP in 2021 to a more manageable 0.6% in 2023.
The state is as corrupt as ever. But optimists note that much of the money that is stolen is now invested locally, rather than spirited abroad. Cranes long dormant are rotating again. Well-tended shrubbery has appeared by roads in Basra. The old city of Mosul, which was bombed to cinders during the war against IS, is being rebuilt with help from the UN. Of the 6m Iraqis displaced by that war, almost 80% have returned to their areas of origin.
Covid-19 has spurred innovation. Credit cards are rare, making it hard for homebound Iraqis to order things online. So firms such as Zaincash have built apps to allow digital payments. Small businesses are working incredibly fast because of covid-19, says Rashwan Shareef, who runs a Basra-based online marketing company.
Meanwhile, ordinary Iraqis are getting on with their lives. Ghayth al-Hillo recalls taking a high-school exam in Baghdad in the turbulent days of 2007. Desks were spaced far apart to prevent cheating. When a gunfight broke out on the floor below, the teacher did not stop the exam. We were told to sit closer together, away from the windows, recalls Mr Hillo.
Now, aged 30, he seldom hears shooting. He is developing an online startup, Join the Club, to help Iraqis improve their English. He is guardedly hopeful about the future. But still, he scorns the choices at the upcoming election. Im going to spoil my ballot, he says.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Thirsting for change"
ExxonMobil operated field has output capacity of 500,000 b/d
Current oil production is 380,000 b/d
Iraq in talks with ExxonMobil to buy its 32.7% stake in field
Iraq plans to boost the production capacity of West Qurna 1 by 40% to more than 700,000 b/d over the next five years at a time when operator ExxonMobil seeks to exit one of the world's largest oil fields with expected recoverable reserves of over 20 billion barrels.
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Iraq's state-run Basrah Oil Co. signed a contract with ExxonMobil and Schlumberger to boost the field's production capacity by 200,000 b/d by drilling 96 wells, the oil ministry said in a statement June 17.
Currently West Qurna 1 is producing 380,000 b/d out of a production capacity exceeding 500,000 b/d, Karim Hattab, a deputy oil minister said in the statement. The field also produces around 150 MMcf/d of associated gas, he added.
Iraq is in talks with ExxonMobil to take over its 32.7% stake in West Qurna 1, the country's oil minister Ihsan Ismaael said May 3.
Ismaael had previously said Iraq was in talks with potential unnamed US energy companies to take over ExxonMobil's stake. Other partners in West Qurna 1, where ExxonMobil is the main operator, are PetroChina (32.7%), Japan's Itochu (19.6%), Indonesia's Pertamina (10%) and Iraq's Oil Exploration Co. (5%).
Iraq awarded the contract to develop West Qurna 1 to ExxonMobil, Shell and Oil Exploration Co. in 2010. In 2018, Shell sold its 19.6% stake to Itochu and exited the giant Majnoon oil field.
ExxonMobil's exit from the southern West Qurna 1 field may be similar to Shell's 2018 divestment of its stake in Majnoon, whose operations are now managed by Basrah Oil Co., the minister said May 3.
In recent years, Turkey has widely expanded its role in northern Iraqs autonomous Kurdish region. It had maintained bases and a presence in the area for decades, dating back to the 1990s, a result of it being able to expand into Iraq as the Iraqi state weakened.
In fact, what is interesting about Turkeys growing role in northern Iraq is that it does not correlate with any kind of increased terrorism. There are no terrorist attacks in Turkey, yet the fewer the attacks, the more Turkey has invaded Iraq and also Syria. This means the war Turkey is waging likely has nothing to do with an actual threat.
This leads to questions about what Turkeys real goal is. Pro-Ankara voices will claim that Turkey faces an existential threat from the PKK. Perhaps decades ago when the PKK insurgency was larger and actually existed in Turkey, this was the case. As recently as 2015, when Turkeys leading AKP party ended a ceasefire with the PKK and held two elections in a row to try to reduce the role of the left-leaning HDP party in parliament, a widening conflict broke out.
This is a complex story. Western officials, including the US, backed Turkeys war against the PKK as part of the global war on terrorism. At the same time, Ankara was encouraged to enable opposition parties to play a role in the country, such that disaffected Kurds who might have embraced the PKK could choose the ballot box instead of resistance.
Many Kurds backed the AKP in the early 2000s, and there was a major opening for Kurdish language and other Kurdish issues in Turkey. The HDP, which has many Kurdish backers, crossed the 10% threshold to enter parliament. This appeared to be what everyone wanted: peaceful elections and a new leaf in Kurdish relations in Turkey.
But the ruling AKP Party and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thrive on war and crisis. Abandoning a peace policy and no problems with our neighbors, Erdogan began to mobilize the army for operations in Syria and, increasingly, Iraq, as well as lead a brief war in Turkey against the PKK in 2015 and 2016. The result was that Turkey began arresting opposition members of the HDP, crushing Kurdish activists, and was soon ethnically cleansing Kurds from Afrin, and sending drones and F-16s to bomb Iraq.
Ankara was backed by key officials in former US president Donald Trumps administration who were pro-Turkey. Turkey also argued that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria were linked to the PKK. Toward that end, Turkey argues that the YPG, a part of the SDF, are YPG/PKK terrorists.
Turkey upped its attacks on the YPG in Syria to pressure the US to leave. When the US wouldnt leave, Turkey increased operations in Iraq, hoping to isolate the YPG and PKK by cutting off Iraq from Syria. Turkey lobbied to keep the borders closed.
This is made more complex by the role of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. Led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan region is a successful autonomous region, with its own airports and security forces. Turkeys increased fighting in Iraq has the potential to destabilize the KRG and erode its autonomy.
For critics of the PKK this illustrates how the presence of PKK fighters in Iraq, usually in a mountainous area called Qandil, undermines Kurdish autonomy. Critics ask the PKK and Turkey to keep their fight in Turkey.
But for others the story is more complex, asserting that Turkey and the KDP work closely together. For years Turkey was a major economic lifeline to Erbil and northern Iraq, creating natural shared interests between the KRG and Turkey. But Kurds were always wary of Turkeys ambitions, especially if Ankara uses the presence of the PKK to increase its influence.
The question remains as to Turkeys real goal. It claims to want to defeat the PKK entirely, which would mean more bases. But Turkeys threats dont stop with Qandil; it wants to bomb Sinjar and Makhmour refugee camp, and isolate and destroy the Kurdish region of Syria, which is called Rojava. Turkey openly told the UN in the fall of 2019 that it wanted a buffer zone or safe zone in Syria, sketching out a map where Turkey would take control of all the Kurdish cities in northeast Syria, depopulate them and settle several million Arab refugees in those areas.
In northern Iraq, Turkeys bombardment has caused many villages to be depopulated. But Turkeys goal here is not to resettle the area. Rather, it appears Turkey is prodding Erbil into greater conflict with the PKK, hoping to create a Kurdish civil conflict. Such a conflict happened in the 1990s between Kurdish groups. Turkey benefits when Kurds fight each other and when it can pretend to be fighting terrorism to increase its occupation and bases abroad.
The question is whether Turkeys end goal in northern Iraq is to reduce the autonomy of the KRG or to prod the KDP to fight the PKK, and in so doing, in Turkeys view, end the presence of the PKK in the mountains, or at least shift the conflict.
Turkey ostensibly does not have too many shared interests with Baghdad, because Ankara has generally not gotten along well with the pro-Iran militias in Iraq that are backed by Baghdad.
While Turkey gets along with the Iranian regime, the rhetoric of the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq is that they view Turkey as an aggressor. Many of them have bad memories of the days when Ankara enabled tens of thousands of ISIS members to cross into Syria and invade Iraq.
They know that Ankaras regime feels comfortable with ISIS-style jihadists who would ethnically cleanse Shiites.
This means that Ankara prefers the KRG to balance Baghdad, at least in the near term. But Ankaras role also appears to undermine the KRG at the same time.
Ankara has not spelled out its final goals in Iraq, and it remains to be seen what its next moves will be.
BAGHDAD--An Iraqi anti-graft police officer was shot dead outside his home Friday, a police official said, in the second such murder in the countrys south over the last month.
Armed assailants this morning shot dead Mohammed al-Shemussi, a captain in the anti-corruption section, in front of his home, said Majed Hamid, a police captain in Amara, the capital of Maysan province.
The perpetrators fled in a taxi, he added.
Shemussi was in charge of applying the mandates of the integrity commission, the federal governments anti-corruption body.
Corruption in Iraq has deprived the public purse of some $450 billion of revenues since 2003, according to a 2019 parliamentary report.
In May, another Iraqi officer specialising in corruption issues was killed in Maysan.
He was killed the day after a police search at the homes of corruption suspects, another police source said.
The home of the Maysan tax authoritys chief was among those searched, the source said.
Such positions are routinely allocated on the basis of political allegiance in Iraq.
The two killings are part of a wave of attacks against anti-corruption personnel in the rural province, sometimes involving bombs, including one against a judge, the source added.
Graft is endemic across Iraq, which ranks among the worlds worst offenders in Transparency Internationals annual Corruption Perceptions Index.
Since 2004, a year after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, almost $450 billion of public funds have vanished into the pockets of shady politicians and businessmen, according to parliament.