Iraq could be the epicenter of a global superbug outbreak, a new study warns.

Scientists at American University in Beirut, Lebanon, say decades of war in the country — including the US invasion in the 2000s — had led to a 'catastrophic rise' in antibiotic resistance.
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Destroyed healthcare infrastructure, medicine shortages, heavy metal contamination and poor sanitation were all likely to blame, they argued.

Scientists and doctors are concerned about a bacteria emerging that cannot be treated using currently available antibiotics. Estimates suggest it could cause 10million deaths a year by 2050 if no action is taken.

Last month the discovery of supergonorrhea in Massachusetts — which showed signs of resistance to antibiotics — prompted health authorities to warn the bacteria poses a 'serious public health concern'.

Previously, antibiotic resistance has largely been attributed to the overuse of antibiotics.

But attention is now turning to other factors, such as heavy metals and disinfectants that are used in conflict, healthcare and the hospitality sector. 

War has been implicated as a factor in the emergence of antibiotic resistance since the 1940s, but the authors say it has received little attention.

The scientists said they chose to focus on Iraq because the country had been beset by conflicts for the past four decades.

This included the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the First Gulf War in 1991, and the US-led invasion and occupation launched in the 2000s. The country also faced an Islamic State insurgency in the 2010s.

The study authors, whose paper was published in the journal BMJ Global Health, reviewed other studies in the paper to warn that the conflicts had led to an environment perfect for the spread of ‘microbial pathogens’ in the country, which cause disease.

Metals used in weaponry and explosives such as lead, mercury, chromium and copper, are all present in war environments.

Some bacteria species taken from these areas are already shown to have evolved resistance to combat these heavy metals' toxicity.
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Study author Dr Antoine Abou Fayad said: 'Contemporary conflicts waged in urban and industrialized landscapes pressure microbes with selective environments that contain unique combinations and concentrations of toxic heavy metals and antibiotics, while simultaneously providing niches and dissemination routes for microbial pathogens.

'These can include the high number of wounded, the nature of wounds, refugee displacement, the collapse of sanitation controls, loss of diagnostics and skilled healthcare personnel, the dismantlement of healthcare infrastructures and the placement of often under-resourced and improvised field hospitals where both injured combatants and civilians are exposed to harmful pathogens with limited care and resources to properly recover.'

Though war environments have been linked with the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) since the 1940s, the research team say the risk posed by Iraq has so far received little attention.
They say it needs to be studied further in order to prevent millions of unnecessary deaths.

Dr Fayad added: 'Taken together, a destroyed healthcare infrastructure, inappropriate microbial therapies, limited resources, high heavy metal contamination in humans and the environment, and a lack of [clean water, sanitation and hygiene], combined, likely play instrumental roles in the catastrophic rise of AMR in Iraq and, by extension, regionally and globally.
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'Understanding these linkages between AMR and conflict, especially across time, is essential for a global response to AMR, especially as there is little indication that conflict, worldwide, will abate in years to come.'

The poverty rate in Iraq was 25%, or about 11 million people, in 2022, according to the country’s Ministry of Planning.

The state-run Iraqi News Agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying that the reasons for the high poverty rate include repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis that resulted from the drop in oil prices.

The ministry spokesman said that the government has supported those affected by the level of poverty in Iraq by raising some salaries and by improving the system for ration cards. The spokesman noted that Iraq faces significant challenges, including problems in the political and security sectors, economic instability, social unrest caused by high unemployment, eroded public services, and persistent low standards of living.

This is part of a special series where NPR looks back at our coverage of major news stories in the past. Listen to the full audio story to hear excerpts from Colin Powell's U.N. speech and more of NPR's archival audio.
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There wasn't just one moment that led to the Iraq War. But one speech, delivered 20 years ago at the United Nations, would come to define and undermine the conflict.

On Feb. 5, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sat in front of members of the U.N. Security Council. He'd been a staunch critic of U.S. intervention against Iraq's authoritarian leader, Saddam Hussein.

But with the world watching, Powell made a case for war.

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources — solid sources," he said. "These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Powell used information that intelligence officials assured him was credible. There were reconnaissance photos, elaborate maps and charts, and even taped phone conversations between senior members of Iraq's military.

"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons," Powell said. "Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again — against his neighbors, and against his own people."

Powell repeatedly used one phrase during his hour-long speech: "weapons of mass destruction." He said those words a total of 17 times. It was the phrase the Bush administration kept publicly using to help justify invading Iraq.

A month and a half after the U.N. speech, President Bush ordered air strikes over Baghdad. It marked the beginning of a military operation "to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger," Bush said in a televised address to the nation.

U.S. forces toppled Hussein's regime in a matter of weeks, and the search intensified for evidence of Iraq's so-called "weapons of mass destruction." But the weapons were nowhere to be found.
Americans started asking questions.

"It's kind of embarrassing they haven't found anything," said Allen Hunley, a Tennessee dentist who spoke to NPR in July 2003 while attending the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. "It's almost like they were salesmen and they had a thing to sell."

National security analyst Joseph Cirincione also criticized Powell's speech in comments to NPR. Particularly, Powell's assurances that there was solid evidence behind his claims of sophisticated and illicit Iraqi weapons programs.
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"Now we know that that just wasn't true," said Cirincione, then the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

California Rep. Jane Harman served as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and voted in support of the 2002 measure OK'ing the use of military force against Iraq. Reports of a "very long and scary list of active weapons of mass destruction" influenced that decision, Harman told NPR.
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"I believed what I was told," Harman said on All Things Considered in January 2004. "And I'm as surprised as you that it turns out that there are no stockpiles of weapons."
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There were also claims Bush took advantage of Powell's reputation by dispatching him to the U.N.

"As Bush said to him at the time, 'Maybe they'll believe you. Maybe the audience will believe you,' " journalist and Powell biographer Karen DeYoung told NPR in 2006. "Because it was always clear in the Bush administration that Powell was more popular than anyone else."

To this day, the Iraq War is widely viewed as a foreign policy and humanitarian disaster. The conflict dragged on for almost nine years and claimed nearly 4,500 American lives. Over 185,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Some 2 million Iraqis had been displaced from their homes by the time U.S. forces pulled out in 2011.

Three years later, President Obama ordered troops back to Iraq to help combat the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — assuring Americans he would not commit to "another ground war." U.S. forces officially withdrew in December 2021 after almost seven years of fighting.
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Powell later called his U.N. speech a "great intelligence failure" and a "blot" on his record, telling NBC News' Meet the Press in 2004 he trusted the information he'd gotten.

"But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading," Powell said. "And for that, I am disappointed. And I regret it."

DW's Jaafar Abdul Karim, a popular TV host in the Arabic-speaking world, and his production team canceled plans to film in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad after facing threats.

Abdul Karim and other staff members of Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster, had to leave Iraq on short notice on Thursday morning due to security concerns.

The team traveled to the Iraqi capital to film a new episode of "JaafarTalk." The production was meant to take place in cooperation with the Iraqi broadcaster Al-Rasheed. DW has criticized the incident as an "unacceptable" attack on press freedom.
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"JaafarTalk" is one of the most viewed TV formats in the Arabic-speaking world. The weekly DW talk show deals with topics that are considered taboo in the region, including violations against human rights or lacking gender equality for women.

On the social media platform TikTok, "JaafarTalk" is the most successful channel produced by a German media company, with over 1.4 million followers, according to rankings published by media trade magazine The Fix.


'JaafarTalk' host threatened with arrest

In its latest episode, the show planned to deal with unemployment rates among youths, as well as political participation and women's rights. The production was planned to take place in Baghdad's Zawraa-Park.

Representatives from Iraq's protest movement and government representatives were due to take part in the show. Some 50 audience members were also invited.

But Abdul Karim said he and his team were put under increasing pressure by high-ranking Iraqi officials.

An Iraqi media outlet circulated a video in which it accused the DW host of wanting to spread "abnormal and perverse" sexual behaviors in Baghdad. The video included clips from earlier "JaafarTalk" episodes that dealt with homosexuality. The media outlet called on Iraqi authorities to stop the filming of the new episode.

Iraq's Commission for Communications and Media suddenly demanded that DW acquire a special filming permit, despite DW's partners already having applied for the normally required permits in advance, which had already been granted.

Representatives from the Iraqi Interior Ministry then came to a hotel on Wednesday evening where Abdul Karim and his team were staying.
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According to DW, the Interior Ministry representatives informed Abdul Karim that he was not allowed to continue his work without a special permit. If he did not comply, he would face arrest. The Iraqi government could no longer guarantee his safety, the representatives said.

​DW lodges complaint with Iraqi embassy

"This was an arbitrary action against us," Abdul Karim said. "A day before the show was to be filmed, new demands and restrictions were issued by the hour."

Manuela Kasper-Claridge, DW's editor-in-chief, criticized the actions of Iraqi officials.

"It is alarming how journalists are being treated in Iraq. The threats made against our team and presenter Jaafar Abdul Karim by forces in Iraq that seek to put an end to freedom of expression are entirely unacceptable," she said.

"The JaafarTalk program reaches millions of people, because DW provides a platform for important debates in the region. Even though we were forced to cancel the show, we will continue our reporting on developments in Iraq," Kasper-Claridge added.

DW has lodged a protest with the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin against the treatment of the broadcaster's employees and for hindering journalistic work.

"This large-scale coercion by the Republic of Iraq is an unprecedented restriction of press freedom," the German international broadcaster said in a statement.

Freedom of expression is severely restricted in general in Iraq. According to the Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Iraq is currently ranked at 172 out of 180 countries in the index.

According to figures gathered by Reporters Without Borders, nearly 300 journalists have been killed in Iraq over the past 20 years.

In Iraq, Shiite militias have a particularly great influence on the government. The armed groups are closely linked to the regime in neighboring Iran. While they are officially subordinate to the Iraqi prime minister, they tend to operate independently of the government.

Small gangs of buffaloes sat submerged in green and muddy waters. Their back ridges rose over the surface like a chain of black islets, spanning the Toos River, a tributary of the Tigris that flows into the Huwaiza marshes in southern Iraq.
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With their melancholic eyes, they gazed with defiance at an approaching boat, refusing to budge. Only when the boatman shrieked “heyy, heyy, heyy” did one or two reluctantly raise their haunches. Towering over the boat, they moved a few steps away, giving the boatmen barely enough space to steer between a cluster of large, curved horns.
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On the right bank of the river stood a cultural centre built in the traditional style of southern Iraq, with tall arches made of thick bundles of reed tied together. It catered to a large number of Iraqi tourists and a handful of foreigners who have flocked to visit the marshland region since it was named a Unesco world heritage site in 2016.

A couple of hundred metres past the cultural centre, however, the engine of the boat sputtered, and its bottom scrapped against the mud as the river dwindled into a shallow swamp, where small herons and grebes stood in water barely reaching halfway up their stick-like legs.

The foliage on the two banks also disappeared, revealing a devastating scene: what two years earlier was a great expanse of blue water, a lagoon teeming with wildlife, fish, and home to large herds of water buffaloes, had turned into a flat desert where a few thorny shrubs sprouted.

Under the scorching sun, the hot wind kicked tumbleweed across parched yellow earth, scarred with deep cracks and crumbling into thin dust under the feet. Rising above the ground were mounds of dead reed beds upon which the marsh dwellers had built their homes. A few relics of their former life lay scattered around: broken plastic buckets, some rusting metal pipe, and a kettle.
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​The ruin of nearly 3,000 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of this unique ecosystem is a small example of the unprecedented environmental disaster unfolding in Iraq. Rivers and lakes that had spawned farming communities since the dawn of civilisation are drying up, the country’s water reserves reduced by half, while the Iraqi ministry of water resources estimates that one-quarter of Iraq’s fresh water will be lost in the next decade.

In the province of Mosul and surrounding areas, considered Iraq’s bread basket, two consecutive drought seasons have turned large swaths of wheat and barley fields into arid lands, leading to the loss of nearly 90% of the most recent harvest. Officials believe that will continue to the next season.

After canals and rivers went dry, farmers began digging boreholes, but the unregulated use of underground water is causing a severe drop in the quality and water levels. In the southern region of Samawa, the illegal digging of boreholes has led to the total disappearance of Lake Sawa.

Meanwhile, freak sandstorms battering cities and eroding the soil have become a recurrent event owing to the drought and loss of vegetation coverage – 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) are lost to desertification each year.

The drought is leading to the displacement of tens of thousands of people, pushing farmers to abandon their lands and move into the margins of big cities, settling in shanties on their outskirts, straining an already crumbling infrastructure and causing further destruction of agricultural lands and desertification. And in a country with a fragile security situation, rife with heavily armed militias and awash with an abundance of weapons, the competition over water, and the unregulated digging of boreholes, is creating local feuds that threaten to spill into larger conflicts.

The causes for these environmental disasters are multiple and interlinked: rising temperatures, record low rainfalls due to the climate crisis; the drastic reduction of the amount of water reaching Iraq from upstream countries, with Turkey’s extensive dam networks on the Tigris and Euphrates cutting Iraq’s share by 60%, while nearby Iran has diverted tributaries and other rivers. The temperature rise is also causing an increase in water evaporation, contributing to the depletion of reservoirs.

​Throughout these decades, government officials – from the British colonial officer to Saddam’s Republican Guard – saw in the dense marshes and dizzying maze of canals a place of refuge for those opposing central authority, from the African slaves who revolted in the ninth century, to communists and Islamist rebels in modern times, along with droves of military deserters who fled conscription.

That view of the marshes as a dangerous place and home to brigands contributed to the way the city people and countryside farmers looked at and despised the marsh Arabs.

“The impact of climate change is working as a threat magnifier,” said Dr Hassan al Janabi, a former minister for water resources and an environmental expert. “But in essence, this is a man-made disaster, in which the marshes are the clear victims, due to misunderstanding of the unique climate and cultural importance of the region.”

He added: “Its destruction is part of the traditional prejudice of the city towards the countryside, and especially against the marsh people who have always been the victims of discrimination and at the receiving end of insults because they raise buffaloes.

“There are hundreds of illegal rivers diverting water towards the lands of influential people who use them for fish farms or irrigating their lands. We have lost 80% of the buffaloes because of mismanagement.”

Just north of the Toos, which is supposed to feed water into the Huwaiza marsh, a local activist pointed out two large fish ponds and an illegally dug canal that siphons water into nearby agricultural lands, all belonging to a powerful local tribal sheikh. In the past month, even the trickle of water in the Toos had dried.

A ministry in Baghdad determines the allocation of water for irrigation to each province, with agriculture consuming the largest share of water – nearly 65%. The severe drought has led to an increase in competition, in which the interests of weaker communities, such as the marsh dwellers, are sacrificed in the interests of more powerful ones.

“This is a crime that is taking place right in front of our eyes,” said Janabi. “The marshes are the true historical lineage of Mesopotamia but these groups which have lived here for thousands of years see their way of life being eradicated for the benefit of rice cultivators, which in reality has zero economical impact as we import 95% of our rice.”

‘Revival has gone’
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In the Chibayish, the central marshes in the basin of the Euphrates, the scenes of drought and devastation are repeated. What was once an extensive marshes network has shrunk today to a few isolated ponds of stagnating brackish water, stinking of dead fish and highly polluted, sitting amid large swatches of desert landscape. The long, elegant mashoof boats that once plied these waters now lie on their sides, crusted with salt and dried mud.

On the edge of one of these ponds, Abdul Sattar and his two sons took shelter from the oppressive heat in a small mud room, bare except for two reed mats on the dirt floor. An old air cooler clanked noisily outside the small window, churning in hot air.

The eldest son, a slender young man in his 20s, served tea while Abdul pondered in silence for some time when asked about the impact of drought. When he spoke, the words tumbled fast in a heavy guttural accent. He said that in the past few months dozen of his buffaloes had died, and those that remained were too skinny to be sold. “If I butcher them and sell them as meat, they will fetch more,” he added, pulling at the tattered brim of his stained and muddy dishdasha.

In his 40s, with a gaunt face and bronze-coloured skin, withered and beaten by the harsh Iraqi sun, feet caked in mud and cracked, he looked at anyone coming from the city with suspicion. He said the buffaloes were unable to feed themselves because of the drought and were dependent on whatever fodder he could provide.

“They used to go out and graze for a week or two on the green reeds and other vegetation and only come back when they needed to be milked,” he said. “Now I have to feed them, each needs half a tonne of fodder a week, but I can barely afford half of that. Mothers don’t even produce enough milk to feed their calves.”

He looked at his youngest son across the room, a 12-year-old asleep under a blanket in a feeble attempt to hide from the buzzing flies, and said his family were going hungry so he could feed the buffaloes to keep them alive, barely.

The buffaloes refuse to drink the highly polluted water even when they find small mud pools to wallow in. He pointed towards the jug of brackish yellow water that sat in front of him and said he had to drive to the nearby town to buy the drinking water he shared between his family and his buffaloes.

Once before, the marshes where his clan raised their buffaloes had dried; that was in 1994, after Saddam’s campaign to dry the marshes. He was a young man then and accompanied his family as they moved north, finding shelter on the banks of the Tigris south of Baghdad, and he came back after the toppling of the regime, when reviving the marshes became a political priority. “Reviving the marshes was the only thing we got after the [regime] change, and even that is gone now.”

Outside the mud room, three emaciated-looking buffaloes sat in a small muddy pond. A larger herd stood nearby in the shade of a metal canopy. Abdul said generation after generation his tribe had lived with these buffaloes, so dear to them that they had given them individual names.

“These animals, they mean a lot for us, they are like family. We pain when we see them wither and die in front of our eyes,” he said. “I swear if I knew how to do anything else I would, but me and my father, and his father before him, knew nothing but how to raise buffaloes.”

Selling up and moving out

Agriculture, which generates 3% of Iraq’s GDP, employs nearly one-fifth of its workforce, tethering people to their lands and contributing to maintaining the vegetation coverage needed to lessen the impact of sandstorms, soil erosion and global heating.

However, the drought and subsequent crop failures are pushing thousands of families to abandon their lands – 20,000 since 2021, according to International Organization for Migration estimates – heading instead towards the big cities.

In a small neighbourhood tucked under an overpass north of the city of Basra, Karar lives with his family in a small hut built with concrete blocks. Like his neighbours’, his roof is made of corrugated metal and plastic sheets, pinned down with large rocks and blocks. A deep and wide ditch carries the neighbourhood sewage, where trash and plastic bottles float on a grimy metallic green liquid.

As is the case for many of the farmers of Amara and Nassiriya – who at the best of times constituted the poorest people in Iraq – the drought has turned his hardship into destitution.

He said that a few years ago, he came to realise that farming was dying in his village north of the Huwaiza marsh. Water levels were falling, and he had to use a diesel pump to irrigate his fields. “The money we got, we paid on gas for the water pumps. We were going hungry,” he said.

So he sold the few animals he had – sheep and a few buffaloes – and moved to this neighbourhood, trying to scavenge a living from the margins of Basra’s booming oil-fuelled economy, working as a day labourer.

He said he was fortunate to sell his cattle and move out before the worst of the drought hit the area. “Now, my brothers call me and say we wish we left the land and came with you then because now no one wants to buy our buffaloes because they are too skinny.”

Dead palms and buffaloes
In Seeba, in Iraq’s most southern tip, the environmental disaster takes a different shape. Lying on the western banks of Shatt al-Arab, the waterway formed by the meeting of the Euphrates and Tigris, its fertile orchards and fields had been home to dense palm tree plantations for centuries. Water from Shatt al-Arab flows naturally through its canals, regulated by the high and low tide of the nearby Gulf.

During the war with Iran, Seeba became a frontline and battleground. Trenches were dug, fields of barbed wires were stretched, artillery bombardments and tanks destroyed the palm plantations, and thousands of young Iraqi and Iranian soldiers died there. However, after the end of the war, people came back and started reviving their land and eventually restored many of its palm groves.

“If you came here in the 90s, you wouldn’t be able to see Abadan,” said Ridha, a young farmer from the region, as he pointed at the gleaming towers of the Abadan refinery across the waterway.

But things began to change after 2004 when reduced levels of water flowing from the Tigris and Euphrates enabled seawater from the Gulf to intrude deeper and deeper into the Shatt al-Arab, eventually reaching Basra itself for the first time in 2018, which led to mass unrest.

“Since 2009, Seeba has been a disaster zone, and most of our farmlands have disappeared because of the catastrophic rise in water salinity,” an official in the town said.

The exact causes of the drought in the north were reflected here, the official said. From the impact of global heating to Turkey’s reduction of the water volume flowing through the Tigris and Euphrates, Iran’s diversion of tributary rivers such as the Karun, and the discharge of raw sewage and oil industry chemicals into Shatt al-Arab. “Even the upstream provinces are taking Basra’s share of fresh water because of the expansion of their population.”

The high salinity in the water flowing naturally through the irrigation canals is now causing the palm trees to die. “All the water pumps on the riverbanks were cancelled, and farmers are blocking their own canals,” said the official. “Now we get some water pumped from upstream through pipes, or we buy it in trucks. In 2012 the state allocated compensations for the farmers that they have yet to receive 10 years later.”

A proposed mega-desalination project for seawater from the Gulf had been stalled for years, with politicians in Baghdad and Basra accusing each other of receiving kickbacks and commissions. “From a million palm trees in the 1970s, now we have less than 10,000. Farming here is living now by the drip.”

Ridha, tall, lean, moustachioed and wearing a black dishdasha with a red checked kufiya wrapped around his head, pointed at the palm trees in his orchard, each named after the variety of its dates: “Khistawi, barhi, braim …” But most of these precious palm trees died due to the polluted water, losing their tops and long branches, with the top of the trunks bent like a wilting stump.

He motioned towards a canal zigzagging between the dead trees. “The water is killing our palms,” he said. “Back in the 1990s we swam in these rivers, used the water for drinking and cooking, but now farmers are blocking their irrigation canals to prevent the poisonous water from entering their fields. Those who still want to farm have to buy trucks of water, but most are just abandoning the lands and getting a government job with the police or the Hashed [Shia paramilitary units].”

Ridha pointed at another scourge in the area’s environmental disaster, a large herd of buffaloes. As the drought destroyed the marsh habitat to the north, the Ma’dan owners moved their herds here, settling them among the fields and in the now dormant irrigation canals. They have become a real menace to the farmers.

Behind the banks of a wide irrigation canal thick with green waters, and lined with rows of decapitated palm trees, a large group of buffaloes sat submerged in a swamp.

Ridha looked at them and said they were worse than the plague. “They are destroying the land,” he said. “Their owners let them roam freely. They are heavy, and they break the earth, flood the area and turn the farms into swamps. Sometimes they break into orchards and feed on the young palm saplings; no fence can stand against them.”

The environmental collapse exacerbates the old tensions between the well-armed Ma’dan and the farmers. “If the farmers shoot at them or kill a buffalo, the owners will come armed and start a fight, and we can’t fight them,” said Ridha, “and now only the army can save us.”

SITUATION AT A GLANCE

2.5 MILLION People in Need of Humanitarian Assistance UN – March 2022

961,000 Number of People in Acute Need UN – March 2022

1.2 MILLION Estimated Number of People Internally Displaced in Iraq IOM – December 2022

178,691 Number of Internally Displaced People Residing in Camps CCCM – November 2022

258,541 Number of Syrian Refugees in Iraq UNHCR – December 2022

• Approximately 98 percent of IDPs sheltering in Iraq’s 26 remaining formal camps do not intend to return to their areas of origin or other locations in the country through July 2023, according to a REACH survey.

• Host community members, IDPs, and returnee households lack access to basic services and civil documentation in Iraq, according to regular monitoring conducted by IRC.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

Returnee Populations Face Severe Living Conditions in Iraq

Of the nearly 5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have returned to areas of origin or other locations in Iraq since March 2014, nearly 600,000—approximately 12 percent of Iraq’s returnee population—reside in locations where they face severe living conditions characterized by limited basic services and livelihood opportunities, ongoing insecurity, and perceived issues of safety and social cohesion, according to an assessment conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) between July and September 2022. The number of returnees reporting poor or severe living conditions during this period increased by nearly 17,500 people compared to the January–March period when IOM last conducted the survey. The assessment identified poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and diminishing public water supply, particularly in Anbar Governorate, as the main drivers of the deterioration in living conditions. Ninewa and Salah al-Din governorates continued to host the highest number of returnees reporting severe living conditions, with nearly 256,600 returnees and more than 210,800 returnees, respectively, while the three districts reporting the most severe conditions were all found in Salah al-Din Governorate, according to IOM.

The majority of IDPs sheltering in the 26 remaining formal camps across Iraq’s Dohuk, Erbil, Ninewa, and Sulaimaniya governorates—approximately 98%—do not intend to return to their areas of origin between July 2022 and July 2023, according to an intentions survey conducted by REACH in July 2022 and published in November. Despite this, 58 percent of the IDPs surveyed in Erbil and 75 percent of those surveyed in Dohuk and Sulaimaniya reported that they do intend to return to their areas of origin at some point. IDPs cited damaged shelters in areas of origin, lack of livelihood opportunities, limited financial resources, and persistent insecurity as the primary impediments to return.

Communities in Iraq Lack Access to Basic Services, Civil Documentation

Host community, IDP, and returnee populations lack access to basic services, such as education, health, and shelter support, and face difficulties navigating the legal processes to acquire civil documentation, according to a report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in mid-January. Nearly 85 percent of households assessed between July and September 2022 reported difficulties in accessing basic services, with many citing high costs as the main barrier. Moreover, nearly 15 percent of households reported one or more members in need of civil documentation, which is required to access basic services and compensation for losses suffered during the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Barriers to acquiring civil documentation include government corruption, harassment— particularly for women and girls—during travel to legal offices, high fees and travel costs to access legal services, lack of awareness of legal procedures, and negative treatment of households with a perceived affiliation to ISIS, according to USAID/BHA sources.

Iraq’s Ministry of Education Plans Permanent Closure of IDP Schools in IKR

In early December 2022, Iraq’s Minister of Education Ebrahim Namis al-Jibouri announced the planned closure of all schools established for IDPs in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) by June 2023. The school closures will hinder access to education for many of the estimated 170,000 IDP students who mainly reside outside of camps and are originally from the conflict-affected governorates of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninewa, and Salah al-Din. The decision will likely prompt students to drop out of school or travel to their areas of origin to attend schools, many of which are overcrowded or offer limited services, according to U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (State/PRM) sources.

It was meant to be the icing on the cake. The crowning of Iraq as champions of the Arabian Gulf was supposed to bring to a conclusion a tournament that had welcomed Iraq back into the international scene.
Celebrations, however, were overshadowed by the reported deaths of at least four from a stampede which also injured dozens of others ahead of the tournament’s final on January 19. Poor crowd control, awful security protocols and mismanagement resulted in the fatal chaos.

Instead of the focus being placed on sport, the failure of the security forces and resulting tragedy at the final became a metaphor for the gross ineptitude of the Iraqi government and burst the bubble of the two-week high that had been the Arabian Gulf Cup.
With hours to go before kick-off it was clear Iraqi government officials were not in control of the tens of thousands of fans who had descended on Basra’s ‘Palm Trunk’ stadium. Government officials quickly began discussing the possibilities of postponing the final of the tournament or even having it transferred to another neutral country as news of causalities began to spread.
Yet the government should have anticipated such crowds and been much better prepared. It was known the match was sold out and it was expected that those without tickets would attempt to crash the match.
Just two weeks earlier, after having attended the opening ceremony in Basra myself, I had written about how badly organised the crowd control was. It was a disaster waiting to happen as tens of thousands were shepherded through bottlenecked gates.

The failures of the government to prepare for the chaos is akin to the patchwork solutions they have implemented to combat years of malignant corruption and collapsing public services.
Even the infrastructure for the football facilities highlighted how jerry-built the rest of the preparation was. Iraq did invest in constructing a stunning 65,000-seater stadium in Basra, but what about the surrounding infrastructure? Dirt tracks lead up to the stadium. A lack of public transport facilities means that cars must rush towards the stadium down single-lane roads, alongside pedestrians. And on January 19, an inadequate number of turnstiles and riot police contributed to the deaths of excited spectators. The government must be held to account.
But as is usually the case with Iraq, the government – in a press release by the prime minister – chose to brush over the failures and instead praise the security forces. “We are also saddened by the unfortunate incidents that took place” is all Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani said, opting to not address the deaths directly. Instead, his statement — which thanked teams and fans for participating in the tournament — had a self-congratulatory feel to it and referred to the prime minister’s “feelings of hope and pride”.
Iraqi fans of course used the occasion to remind the government of their grievances, as the final was due to kick off, by unfurling a banner of Omar Sadoun, a young protestor who was killed by the country’s security forces during a wave of anti-governmental protests in 2021. In all, around 600 Iraqis had died in the crackdown on those protests.

This is all money which could have been used to bolster Iraq’s failing public services, including crowd control in Basra.
In Basra, for example, more than 100,000 people were hospitalised in 2018 because of a lack of access to clean water. Last summer Basra also suffered from consecutive days without any electricity, despite soaring temperatures, once again sending people to hospital as a result of heatstroke and severe dehydration. This even impacted football matches leading up to the Arabian Gulf Cup as electricity cuts switched off the floodlights during matches.
The corruption can be found in each corner of Iraq’s government, including the health sector. After decades of underfunding, hospitals struggle to care for patients in dire need of treatment. Drugs destined for public consumption often get sold to private businesses with officials pocketing the profits.
Even the sports sector has been impacted by corruption and incompetence. The Basra International Stadium was first opened in 2013. That surrounding roads, turnstiles and access into the stadium have still not been developed a decade later is directly related to the preventable deaths at last week’s final.
What was meant to be a joyous occasion has sadly been shadowed by the unnecessary loss of life.
Iraqis should be proud of the success of their team at the Arabian Gulf Cup. Their government, though, has no reason to feel proud of itself. The stampede in Basra should serve as a reminder to the government that fighting corruption and supporting public services must now become a priority for Iraq to truly progress.
Without that, every win for Iraq will be accompanied by an own-goal.

The present political system in Iraq is enshrined in the constitution enacted in a hurry in 2005 under American occupation and with strong input by American-supplied experts. The constitution calls for a parliamentary system. Voters elect the parliament, which in turn elects the president and the speaker of the parliament and designates the prime minister that will form the government.
Not written in the constitution but solidly enshrined in the political praxis is the requirement that the president be a Kurd, the speaker a Sunni, and the prime minister a Shia. In addition, it is also understood by all that cabinet posts must be distributed among all groups in a way that reflects their political weight and creates a balance acceptable to the main players. Since all ethnic and sectarian communities are deeply divided into factions represented by a plethora of political parties, the process of selecting the leadership after the elections is always difficult and protracted.
The delay after the 2021 election was extreme, but it is normal for the process of government formation to last five or six months. As a result, the connection between voters’ choices and the government is rather distant. In the United States, the connection between the vote and the outcome is filtered by the Electoral College. In Iraq, it is filtered by months of bickering and bargaining among political factions and their foreign supporters. The delay alters the balance of power among them by the time the government is formed.

From a strictly technical point of view, Iraq’s formal democratic system worked reasonably well since 2005. The country held elections for a transitional parliament to write the constitution in January 2005, then parliamentary elections in December 2005, March 2010, April 2014, May 2018, and October 2021 (the latter elections were anticipated because of the unrest sweeping the country).

Politically, the functioning of the democratic system was more problematic. Each election saw the participation of far too many parties for any of them to receive a majority. Instead, the vote splintered, first along sectarian and ethnic lines, then along political rivalries within each group. This required the formation of alliances representing major sectors, with each group demanding ministerial posts. The formation of a government required almost 6 months after the December 2005 election and over 9 months after the March 2010 election. In 2014, and again in 2018, about five months separated the elections and the choice of a prime minister.

The formation of the current government was the most difficult and dysfunctional. Negotiations among the parties stretched for almost a year until October 2022, and the parliament that finally voted for the prime minister was not the one elected a year earlier. By that time, the Sadrist movement, which had won the plurality of the vote in 2021, had withdrawn all its representatives from the parliament, Moqtada al-Sadr had declared, not for the first time, that he was withdrawing from politics, and the vacancies left by the anti-Iran Sadrists were filled by members of a pro-Iranian Shia alliance called the Coordination Framework. The parliament that approved the new cabinet, in other words, was quite different from the one elected one year earlier. 

The election-based political process the United States imposed on Iraq after the occupation has not resulted in democracy. It has not resulted in governments that reflect the choices made by voters. It has not led to the formation of governments capable of even beginning to tackle the problems the country faces. I am not talking about the truly daunting, perhaps intractable problem of building some sense of common identity and purpose in the deeply divided country. I am talking of something much more banal, like restoring reliable electricity in a country rich in energy sources and with rapidly growing revenue from its oil exports. The system is too bogged down in the politics of balancing the factions to address policies that would improve the lives of Iraqis.

So-called democracy has failed to bring about either social peace or solutions to concrete, non-political problems. The population is dissatisfied and the newly formed government is fragile. Some have even called for early elections in the hope a new cabinet would be more representative—a singularly bad idea likely to lead to more months of stagnation under an acting prime minister.

​The United States has bequeathed Iraq not democracy but a system of ethnic and religious representation unlike any Iraq had before. I am not arguing of course that before the US occupation ethnic and sectarian tensions did not exist in Iraq. With few exceptions among parties on the left, political organizations identified with a sect or ethnicity. What the United States did, however, is make ethnic and sectarian identity the backbone of the political system, just as it did in other deeply divided societies where it had a voice in the matter.

US intervention in the wars that followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s resulted in the formations of political systems that enshrined religion and ethnicity as determining factors. The Dayton Accord mediated by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on behalf the United States resulted in a seemingly clever, but in reality grotesque, creation in Bosnia that includes a federal system, one component of which is also a federation, and a collective presidency which requires constant international supervision to function even minimally.

The tragedy of systems based on ethnic and sectarian representation is that they offer a short-term solution for a country in crisis, but at a staggering long-term price. Such systems perpetuate and deepen social cleavages, resulting in lasting instability. Lebanon, with a confessional system dating back to the 1940s, is as divided and conflict-ridden as ever and essentially no longer functions as one country. Every election cycle brings new promises of reform, with analysts proclaiming that the younger generation has turned its back on sectarianism, but in reality, nothing changes. Ethiopia managed to avoid a break down in 1992 by instituting a system of ethnic federalism, but now it is back at war with itself, with ethnic identities stronger than ever.
There is no country where ethnic- and sectarian-based governments have brought peace. To the best of my knowledge, there is no country that has been able to free itself from such a system once adopted. In the name of democracy promotion, the United States has put Iraq on the way to long-term institutionalized strife.

​

MARINA OTTAWAY
Former Senior Research Associate and Head of the Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Iraq is facing a deepening hole in its public finances because of a crackdown on corruption and dollar smuggling by the US Federal Reserve since the “theft of the century”, Iraqi officials have told Middle East Eye.

The crisis, which is expected to worsen in the next few weeks, has been caused by a collapse in the daily trade in dollars through a currency auction run by the Central Bank of Iraq.
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The Iraqi government depends on the auction to convert dollars, which it earns through oil revenues, into Iraqi dinars. Last year, about $200m per day on average was being sold through the auction to private banks and companies.
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But that figure dropped sharply in the final two months of the year, falling to a daily average of $56m by late December, according to data reviewed by MEE.

Now the government is facing a shortage of dinars, which has left it struggling to pay public sector salaries and meet its other monthly obligations.
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A senior official at the Central Bank of Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MEE: “The problem we are facing now in Iraq is the scarcity of the Iraqi dinar, not the dollar.”
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Neighbouring countries, which depend heavily on the official foreign currency exchange markets in Iraq to obtain dollars, are also facing a liquidity crisis with Iran, Turkey and Syria all affected, according to officials in Baghdad.

The crisis has affected the wider economy, with the dollar exchange rate on unofficial markets rising from 148 dinars to 163 dinars since late November.

The price of consumer goods has increased. This week, the price of rice rose to 2,350 dinars per kilo (about $1.57), up from 1,850 dinars per kilo (about $1.25), while the cost of cooking oil has more than doubled, from 1,250 dinars per litre (about $0.85) to 3,000 dinars (about $2).

The Iraqi officials whom MEE spoke to denied any direct connection between the current crisis and the so-called “theft of the century”, in which about $2.5bn was stolen from Iraq’s tax authority through a state-owned bank between September 2021 and August 2022.
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But they conceded that the US Federal Reserve had imposed more stringent checks on private banks buying dollars through the auction two months ago, just weeks after details of the theft were disclosed by the Iraqi Ministry of Finance on 10 October.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in October that most of the stolen money was believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq.
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In November, Judge Haider Hanoun, head of the Federal Commission of Integrity (FCI), Iraq’s anti-corruption watchdog, said Iraq had sought help from friendly governments, international organisations and the United Nations to recover the stolen money.

One of Sudani's advisers, who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity, said the Federal Reserve had started checking external financial transfers in November in an attempt to trace the stolen funds.

This had caused delays in the release of transfers and led to a reduction in dollar sales through the auction, the adviser said.
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The Federal Reserve also introduced checks on the source of funds held by private banks participating in the auction, prompting many of them to withdraw and increasing the unofficial exchange rate, the adviser said.
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Crisis meeting

Late in December, the Coordination Framework, the largest political coalition backing the government, held a meeting in Baghdad to discuss the rising cost of the dollar and the crisis in the Iraqi markets.

The meeting was limited to senior leaders in the coalition, Sudani and Mustafa Ghaleb, the governor of the Central Bank.

Ghaleb told the meeting that the Federal Reserve had “serious indications” of dollar-smuggling operations to neighbouring countries, according to one leader who attended the meeting.

Ghaleb named two Egyptian banks based in Dubai to whom most of the dollars bought in the auction had been transferred in the period being investigated, the leader said. The dollars had then been transferred on to Oman and then to Iran.

​Four private Iraqi banks which had transferred the bulk of the money to the two Egyptian banks had been ordered by the Central Bank of Iraq to stop dealing with them in November, following a directive from the Federal Reserve, the leader said.

According to a document seen by MEE, the Central Bank also ordered banks and other financial institutions to stop dealing in dollars with the four banks “for audit purposes” on 6 November.

This was challenged in lawsuits brought against the Central Bank by all four banks - Al-Ansari Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, Al-Qabidh Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment, Asia Al Iraq Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, and the Iraqi Middle East Investment Bank.

But their cases were rejected this week by the Financial Services Court, which affirmed the right of the Federal Reserve to prohibit them from dealing in dollars.

A financial adviser involved in the “theft of the century” investigation told MEE that the episode had furnished the Federal Reserve with “conclusive evidence of the theft of government funds that were taken out with government instruments.

“They could not turn a blind eye to it,” said the adviser. “It provided the required motivation for the Federal Reserve to impose its procedures on private banks and the Central Bank of Iraq.

"They [the Americans] have been looking for this opportunity since 2014 to pounce on foreign currency auction sales, but former prime ministers have always obtained exceptions under the pretext of buying electricity, fuel and other things from Iran.

“But this time the story is different."

MEE contacted the Federal Reserve for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication.

Oil sales revenue

The Iraqi government needs at least eight trillion dinars (about $5.5bn) per month to pay the salaries of government employees, retirees, beneficiaries of social welfare, victims of terrorism and others, and this is secured largely through the currency auction.

Most of this comes from Iraq’s oil revenue, which since 2003 has been paid in dollars into an account held by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

The US Treasury transfers $10bn annually to the Central Bank of Iraq from the proceeds of oil sales, in order to strengthen its foreign currency balance.

This amount is delivered in cash in four instalments. All dollars are new and have serial numbers registered with the Federal Reserve for easy tracking, officials said.

The Central Bank of Iraq then sells the dollars through the foreign currency auction and other channels to obtain dinars for the Ministry of Finance.

Now the decline in dollar sales has caused a shortage of dinars for the Central Bank of Iraq. Even at its peak, the auction does not usually raise enough to meet the $275m which the government needs each day. 

This shortfall is usually covered from currency stocks held by the Central Bank, through internal loans between the bank and the government, by printing more currency, or by other financial activities.

Foreign currency auction data for the past four years reviewed by MEE shows that the amount of dollars traded remained stable, at an average of about $200m per day during 2019 and 2020, despite the decline in oil prices, the Covid pandemic and a recession.

In the first three months of 2021, the amount traded in the auction dropped to historic lows, with just $3m traded on some days.

But in the second week of April, the daily amount jumped suddenly, with an average of $190m traded every day until the end of the year.

In 2022, dollar sales did not fall below an average of $200m per day for the first 10 months of the year.

Two financial advisers who spoke to MEE said the increase from April 2021 was likely linked to the “theft of the century” plot. 

They said the figures aroused suspicion that the theft had started earlier than September 2021, as preliminary investigations had suggested, although they offered no further information to back up this claim.

'Options are limited'

Since the collapse in auction revenues, the Central Bank has opened new outlets selling dollars directly to citizens through the currency auction system, in an effort to raise more dinars.

But data showing foreign currency sales for the past few weeks show that the bank is still selling an average of less than $90m a day.

Iraqi officials expect the situation to deteriorate further over the next few weeks, after the Central Bank launched a new electronic platform for the currency auction earlier this month.

The Central Bank said in a statement that it had launched the platform "in coordination with international bodies for the purpose of ruling and organising window operations for buying and selling foreign currency and ensuring effective control over it”.

The new platform links all banks with the Central Bank and requires banks to disclose information about their customers requesting financial transfers, beneficiaries, correspondent banks and other details.

"The new platform has complicated things more. The actual owners of the money do not want to reveal their identity or the source of their money, so we don’t expect the auction sales to improve soon," one of Sudani's advisers told MEE.

"The pressures are increasing and the situation will get worse if the government does not take decisive measures to contain the crisis. The problem is that the options available are very limited and need time," he said.

The Iraqi parliament has not yet approved the annual budget for 2023, but the amounts allocated for salaries and compensation in the proposed budget, which must be paid in local currency, amount to about 100 trillion dinars ($68bn).

The senior official at the Central Bank told MEE that the bank currently holds about 83 trillion dinars ($56bn), and that quick solutions were needed.

“This does not bode well, and we cannot relax," he said.

“The foreign currency auction window is our primary means to call up the Iraqi currency, so if auction sales remain low, the Central Bank will have to issue a new edition of the local currency."
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​Devaluation risk

Issuing a new edition of the currency would reduce the value of the dinar and further raise the rate of inflation, officials told MEE.

During their meeting with Sudani and Ghaleb, the leaders of the Coordination Framework rejected the governor’s proposal to issue a new edition of the dinar "as it is a risk that will add new burdens on the shoulders of the government and the citizen", one of the attendees told MEE.

Instead, they urged Sudani and Ghaleb to go to Washington to seek to negotiate a six-month grace period before new measures are brought into force, to allow the government and the Central Bank “to be prepared”.

They also called for audits imposed by the Federal Reserve to be relaxed, for procedures for external money transfers to be quicker, for an increase in the number of official dollar sale outlets, and for tighter controls on dollar smuggling through the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq.

"We know that the new measures strengthen the Iraqi economy despite the great pressure it places on everyone, but this will not last for a long time and they will limit corruption in the currency auction," the leader told MEE. 

"The leaders know that private banks and the foreign currency auction represent the infrastructure of major corruption networks in Iraq, so they agreed that fighting corruption will only be achieved by addressing this issue.”

The Iraqi economy is suffering from the US dollar's rise as a result of smuggling dollars outside of Iraq.

As Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani entered Basra Stadium on Thursday to attend the final game of the 25th Arabian Gulf Cup, hundreds of Iraqis chanted, “Bring the dollar price down.” 
The exchange rate of the US dollar to the Iraqi dinar reached 1:1,659 Friday, the highest price since 2004. 
The rise in the dollar price began shortly after the new government came to office in late October of last year, During the previous government, the rate was stable at between 1,450 to 1,470 dinars to the dollar.  

​Several reports attribute the rise to the "smuggling" of US dollars — or illegal transfers — from Iraq to Iran during the term of the new government, which was formed by a majority of militias and political groups close to Iran.

An Iraqi source told Al-Monitor that US officials have brought this issue up several times with Prime Minister Sudani, most recently by White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk last Monday.  

The US Ambassador to Iraq, Alina Romanowski, has been in close contact with the prime minister, holding more than a dozen meetings since the government came to power, and the exchange rate was always at the top of her list.  

In order to address the issue, the Iraqi central bank banned four Iraqi banks from using US dollars: Al-Ansari Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, Al-Qadhaf Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment, Asia Iraq Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, and the Iraqi Middle East Investment Bank. 

The central bank also announced that it is auditing several other banks and financial organizations in an attempt to stop the illegal use of dollars in Iraq.  

Iran is facing a severe economic crisis due to sanctions, with the US dollar's value against the Iranian rial reaching a peak recently of 43,000 rials to the dollar, the highest rate in history. 

Iraq imports gas and electricity from Iran regularly, which is exempt from US sanctions. However, Iraq is not allowed to transfer money to Iran. Thus, Iraq transfers the gas and electricity payments in Iraqi dinars to accounts in Iraqi banks owned by Iranians.  

Yet given the current circumstances, Iran needs US dollars to control rising price and stabilize the economy. 

The smuggling of US dollars, however, is not limited to Iran. Iraqi militias are reportedly smuggling currency as well to Syria and Turkey.