​The plummeting oil price has devastated Iraq's economy, as coronavirus lockdown puts youth protests on hold.

​On Wednesday, Iraq's Parliament voted for a new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who now has a month to form a new government.

He faces many challenges beyond just forming a government; the key ones being the budget and dealing with an unemployed youthful protest movement that brought the previous government to its knees, ousted former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, and now waits to see what the new government will look like.

In 2018, I was invited along with a few other journalists to a background briefing in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, with a senior adviser to then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. 

None of us were expecting much from it and we were not disappointed. However, I did take away one piece of information that confirmed what I had suspected for a long time, that the Iraqi economy was in severe flux. It was not news but the severity of it was clearly at the forefront of the adviser's mind.

Iraq’s judiciary has been under pressure to exonerate corrupt politicians being investigated for embezzlement and abuse of power, the spokesperson for the Supreme Judicial Council said yesterday.

Judge Abdul Sattar Bayrakdar said while the judiciary is taking serious steps to fight corruption and hold embezzlers to account, including some politicians and ministers, they have launched social media campaigns through their allies residing outside of Iraq to accuse Iraqi courts of persecuting them for political reasons.

He explained that the “corrupt politicians” launched their social media campaigns after their political parties failed to close their cases or provide them with protection.

“Some of them [the corrupt] are members of the House of Representatives who enjoy immunity,” he added.
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“The judiciary’s message to those who steal public money is whatever your status or position, your lies will not save you,” he said.


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UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the UK was joining the global call for a worldwide ceasefire to military action as the planet works to combat COVID-19. One week later the British military conducted airstrikes in Iraq.

The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) has accused the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) of attempting to use the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to 'hide from scrutiny' after it was recently revealed that British airstrikes were conducted in Iraq while the Prime Minister was in hospital. 
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Symon Hill, Campaigns Manager of the PPU, explained why these revelations concern him and his network of anti-militarists and pacifist. The airstrikes, which were announced on the MoD website on 25 April 2020, were actually conducted one week after the UK's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said that his government was backing the calls for a global ceasefire amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Betrayed by pro-Iranian players, nominee says he rejects pressures to derail cabinet formation

​Iraq’s prime minister-designate has indicated for the first time serious difficulties in forming a cabinet, saying political pressure he has come under is damaging to the national interest.

Mustafa Al Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief supported by the United States, urged “everyone to put the interest of Iraq above everything else”.

He said in a tweet late on Monday he would only acknowledge forces who “support the course of the state”.

The comments are Mr Al Kadhimi’s clearest response yet to the delays he is encountering ahead of a May 9 deadline to secure a vote of confidence from parliament.

The country has another new prime minister nominee—but no new hopes of success.

​Raise your hand if you were aware that there was a new Iraqi prime minister-designate. No, not the guy who was nominated in mid-March or the guy before him. The new, new one. For those keeping score at home (which at this point is almost no one): On April 9, Iraqi President Barham Salih tapped Mustafa al-Kadhimi to be the country’s next prime minister.

​The incumbent, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, resigned in late November but continues to lead a caretaker government. The man initially chosen to succeed him, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, could not form a government and then came Adnan al-Zurfi, who was also unable to garner enough support to form a government, resulting in Kadhimi’s nomination.

America’s newspapers of record in turn published what now seem to be perfunctory articles about the maybe new Iraqi prime minister that read a lot like so many previous articles about all the other Iraqi prime minister-designates dating back to the invasion of Iraq. Like his predecessors, Kadhimi apparently can balance between the United States and Iran and is a person of integrity who can elicit political support from different factions.

But such testimonials, in typical fashion, are followed by caveats about the significant shortcomings of Iraq’s political system that will likely make it difficult for the prime minister-designate to form a government and subsequently govern. The articles generally close with a fingers-crossed quality. It is a formula that journalists in the field and their editors at home seem to have perfected.

The United States has renewed a waiver for Iraq to continue importing Iranian gas for its dilapidated power grids, a State Department official said on Sunday, but this time for a shorter period of 30 days.

"The Secretary granted this brief extension of the waiver to allow time for the formation of a credible government," a State Department official said, referring to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and added that the waiver would expire on May 26.

Washington has repeatedly extended the exemption for Baghdad to use crucial Iranian energy supplies for its power grid, for periods of 45, 90 or 120 days.

Iraq relies on gas and electricity imports from Tehran to supply about a third of its power grid, crippled by years of conflict and poor maintenance.

And U.S.-Iranian Tensions Only Make Matters Worse

​I​n early April, a video of an elderly woman in what looks to be a makeshift isolation ward in Iraq circulated widely on WhatsApp, shared by Iraqi doctors and journalists alarmed by their country’s apparent inability to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak. The woman, who is dressed in a blue hospital gown, struggles to breathe, but there is no oxygen mask over her face and no doctor nearby. Instead, another woman prays over her while a third bangs at the door, desperate for help that doesn’t appear to arrive. 

Other reports coming out of Iraq paint a picture of an overwhelmed health-care system. Worried about impending shortages of personal protective equipment, doctors are reusing N95 masks. The country has just 1.4 hospital beds and 0.8 physicians per 1,000 people—less than half the levels in some nearby countries. The Iraqi government claims there are only about 1,500 COVID-19 cases countrywide, but the actual number may be far higher—Iraq hasn’t tested at large scale. Nor does it have the surveillance capacity for rigorous contact tracing and monitoring. One physician at a Baghdad hospital told me that he and his colleagues are seeing 50 new COVID-19 cases a day—and it is getting worse. “We are not prepared,” he said.

Decades of war have wrecked the country’s health infrastructure and made it particularly vulnerable to the disease. Two years after the defeat of the Islamic State (or ISIS), 1.5 million people are still internally displaced, without regular access to basic sanitation let alone health care. Most workers make a living in the informal sector, meaning that they now face a stark choice: continue working and risk infection or stop and risk starvation.

Increasing Concern Under Covid-19 Measures

​The death on April 18 of a 20-year-old woman in Najaf, possibly at the hands of her husband, should act as a wake-up call for Iraqi legislators to pass a law against domestic violence, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraqi authorities should investigate and prosecute domestic violence, and ensure appropriate sentences for violence against women.

“Domestic violence has always plagued Iraq,” said Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “We see case upon case of women and girls dying at the hands of their families, Iraq's lawmakers have not done enough to save those lives.”

On April 12, a video surfaced on social media of the woman in a hospital with severe burn wounds. Her mother told Human Rights Watch that eight months ago her daughter married a police officer who had only allowed her to visit her parents once since then. On April 8, her mother said, the husband called to tell her that his wife had a “slight burn accident” and was in the hospital.

The mother could hear her daughter screaming. She rushed to the hospital, where the husband’s mother blocked her from seeing her daughter. Police took the young woman’s statement while her mother was blocked from the room, the mother said. On April 11, when she was able to enter the hospital room, her daughter told her that her husband had beaten her so badly on April 8 that she poured gasoline on herself and warned him that unless he stopped, she would light herself on fire.

In a city with few skyscrapers, the Baghdad Tower stands tall on the desert horizon. Ascend to one of its balconies, and on a clear day you’ll see the Ferris wheel in the Zawra amusement park and the perimeter-bound lawns of the Green Zone.

But the tower is derelict. There’s no one taking sunset selfies on those balconies. The elevator to reach the building’s 672-foot height never runs. Unlit chandeliers gather dust in a revolving rooftop restaurant that doesn’t revolve.
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Instead, like the city over which it presides — once cosmopolitan, now shattered — the tower’s story suggests a forever limbo, a concrete beige monument to hubris suspended between the exigencies of war and the corruption it breeds. That’s to say nothing of the country’s newest threat: a coronavirus outbreak that has forced Iraqis into hiding.

He who expects the upcoming Iraqi elections to be fair, or even half fair, must be not only delusional, but also naive or willingly duped.

​The suggestion to ​​hold early elections in Iraq was initially meant by the ruling clique as nothing more than a ploy to assuage the anger of demonstrators. But it seems that early elections ended up becoming a crucial and fateful necessity for both US and Iranian camps in Iraq. Both sides have found themselves forced to coexist in the country. Now everybody is just waiting to see what the post-pandemic winds are going to bring.

Iran is waiting for the fall of US President Donald Trump and the coming of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to help it rise from its depression, while America is waiting for the Iranian regime to fall in due time because of the sanctions, the coronavirus pandemic and the prospect of a new Iranian Revolution. Just place your faith in God to do his deeds.

As for us – simple Iraqis who are despised by both camps – we too have been waiting, since October of last year, for the revolution of our brave and honourable young patriots to turn the tables on the two camps and return the country to its rightful owners, free of the weapons of the armed gangs, corrupt proxies and despicable traitors.