Tensions are continuing to mount between Turkey and Iran after the two regional powers traded diplomatic barbs and summoned each other's respective ambassadors to complain about their rival's behaviour. 

Both sides have criticised each other for their respective actions in Iraq, with Iran accusing Turkey of breaching Iraqi sovereignty.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has given his first indications of how he intends to deal with Iran-backed Iraqi militants who attack American interests by ordering new airstrikes.

​However, rather than striking at Iranian proxies in Iraq – the country where they conducted their operations against the US – the White House decided to bomb Syria instead, a demonstration that Biden will take limited action against Tehran. 

No Arab country emerged successful from an attempt to implement democracy. Even Tunisia, which sparked the revolutions of the Arab Spring and gave hope to millions of people across the world that democracy was coming to the Arab world is still immersed in political turmoil. But Tunisia isn’t the only Arab country where the democratic experience failed. Let us look at Iraq.

Many people – including myself, admittedly – believed that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq would bring about democracy to the war-torn country. But the country that was once ruled by Saddam Hussein turned into a failed state dominated by Iranian mercenaries. Over the course of a few short years, Iraq’s elites fled the country and sought exile in the West. The country that had once been home to scientists, authors, musicians, and researchers, was deserted overnight.

Soon enough, it was taken over by rampant militias. The infrastructure collapsed. Schools and universities were forced to shut down. And living conditions throughout the country dramatically deteriorated. The rates of poverty, destitution, and hunger among the Iraqi population have almost exceeded 50%. There is no memory of a functioning state apparatus, no jobs, no public services. America, after its ill-fated invasion, claimed to have established a democratic system.

It boasted the Iraqi constitution, the court, the parties, and the free and fair elections. But the truth is that all of these things are just fraud. The Iraqi constitution – devised by Americans, not Iraqis – de facto divides Iraqis based on their sectarian and ethnic affiliations, giving the Kurds the premierships, the Shiites the presidency, and the Sunnis the parliament. In the vacuum created in Iraqi with the departure of US forces, Iran succeeded in deploying Shiite militias that took over Baghdad.

In 2008, a dramatic failure in Iraq finally set the force on a path of improvement.

​This is a story about the nadir, the end of days. Monday, March 24, 2008, marked five years to the month after the British army arrived in Iraq, preaching to the Americans their apparent expertise in counterinsurgency operations and understanding of the manifold ways of, in the historical British upper-class vernacular, “the Arab.” This is the story of how that complacency—the claimed legacy of imperial policing and Belfast; of Greece-to-your-Rome and barely disguised Anglo-American contempt—became apparent.

The British army committed that bafflingly common 21st-century failing: It exuded superiority toward an exterior entity, then felt genuine surprise when that mean-spiritedness did not generate admiration and fellow feeling in return.

And as the British army in Basra, southern Iraq, experienced what some observers would later describe as the greatest British military disaster since Suez in 1956, or the fall of Singapore in 1942—though others dispute the drama of those comparisons—the institution itself would, on a wider level, start to engage in a wholesale (and needed) program of reform.

In 2008, for the British army, the paths of failure and improvement crossed.

This week in march was meant to be Brigadier Julian Free’s rest and recuperation slot, a mid-tour opportunity to go back to Europe for the 45-year-old commander of the British army’s 4th Mechanised Brigade. However, Major General Barney White-Spunner, in charge of the division and Free’s boss, asked to swap with him, and, well, White-Spunner outranked Free. So on March 24, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki inbound from Baghdad to Basra with half his government in tow, it was Free who stood waiting for him, while White-Spunner was in the Austrian ski resort of Zürs.

The administration’s measured response to a rocket attack in Erbil sharply contrasts with a Trump-era campaign against Iran that, more often than not, caught Iraq in the crossfire.

​After a rocket attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad late last year, the Trump administration renewed its threats of withdrawing diplomats from Iraq. A military retaliation against Iran was discussed, and the White House warned of a drastic response “if one American is killed.” None was.

Nor were any Americans killed in a similar strike this week on a United States military base at the airport in Erbil, in northern Iraq, that officials blame on an Iranian-backed militia. One foreign contractor died, and an American service member and several contractors were wounded, prompting Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to describe the United States as “outraged” and another official to sternly promise “consequences for any group responsible.”

But the Biden administration’s otherwise measured response to the rocket fusillade in Erbil stood in sharp contrast with President Donald J. Trump’s pitched campaign against Iran — one that often caught Iraq in the crossfire.

The Iraqi government is finally starting to make progress in its attempt to curb the influence of Kataib Hezbollah.

​Five months after its charismatic leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed by a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport, the Iran-backed group Kataib Hezbollah’s influence on Iraq may be quietly eroding.
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Despite an institutional void since widespread protests across Shiite-majority central and southern Iraq forced the previous government to resign late in 2019 and the international coalition’s recent withdrawal from several Iraqi bases, moves are afoot to more fully integrate some Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) factions into government chains of command and structures that existed prior to 2014.

​If Iraq’s new government manages to do so, it could reduce the influence of powerful armed groups with questionable loyalty to the Iraqi state.

​NATO is planning to scale up its mission training Iraq’s security forces with thousands of new personnel as the military alliance seeks to help keep the Islamic State group at bay, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday.

​“The size of our mission will increase from 500 personnel to around 4,000. And training activities will now include more Iraqi security institutions, and areas beyond Baghdad,” Stoltenberg told reporters after chairing a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

NATO’s training mission was launched in 2018 to help the conflict-ravaged country develop new academies and military schools for its armed forces. It was initially confined to the capital, Baghdad, and in neighboring Jordan.
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​The mission was temporarily suspended last year after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s top general at Baghdad airport, angering the Iraqi government.

Rockets hit US base and airport in Erbil after defense systems failed to activate

​The attack on the US military base at Erbil – in the Kurdistan region of Iraq – and the nearby Erbil airport illustrates once again that US defenses against rocket attacks are inadequate and, for the most part, don’t work.

As far as can be determined, Erbil was defended by a US Patriot air defense system and a C-RAM rapid fire gun system there to protect the Patriot.

There is no information to suggest that either system was activated when a number of rockets slammed into the base and airport. The US and Iraq say they can account for 14 rockets that hit the airport and base; the terrorist group allegedly responsible says 22 rockets were fired.

Iraq’s crude oil exports jumped in the first half of February even after OPEC’s second-biggest producer pledged to cut production this month.

The group and partners including Russia are restraining supply with the coronavirus pandemic still raging. The alliance, known as OPEC+, is seeking to ensure a 66% rally in crude prices since the start of November -- driven by vaccine breakthroughs -- isn’t reversed.

Baghdad pledged to pump below its quota in February to make up for past overproduction. Still, the pace of its crude exports in the first half of the month, if maintained through the rest of February, indicates the country may exceed its self-imposed production target of 3.6 million barrels a day and perhaps even its OPEC+ cap of around 3.85 million.
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Iraq derives almost all its income from oil and, like many other petrostates, is experiencing an economic crisis after the pandemic caused energy demand to collapse last year.

February 18, 2021: The financial situation is very bad, so bad that it has the attention of senior government officials as well as populist religious leaders who have supported the continuing public, and sometimes violent, protests again corruption and misrule in general. The government budget for 2021 includes 20 percent deficit that is covered by expensive loans. Government income fluctuates depending on the sale price for oil and how much Iraq can produce. Because of the global covid19 recession the oil price fluctuated from the $33 to $43 a barrel in 2020. Iraq had to cut production to about three million BPD (Barrels Per Day) for much of 2020 to maintain its membership in OPEC (the oil cartel) and to make up for several instances of overproduction since late 2019.
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Iraq is more dependent on oil income than any other Gulf nation. Because of lower oil prices and lower oil demand the Iraqi GDP shrank eleven ten percent in 2020. The monthly government payroll is $4.5 billion and in 2020 oil income has only been able to cover about half of that. Much of the payroll spending is stolen and the government is under a lot of pressure to save money by making a serious effort to shut down the scams that steal as much as a third of the payroll costs. For most of 2020 the government was able borrow money to cover the monthly budget shortfall. But by late 2020 that the government was out of credit and millions of Iraqis were not getting paid on time. The situation improved a bit at the end of the year when oil price in December reached $48 a barrel.

The 2021 government budget avoided major spending reductions or reducing corruption and mainly depends on higher ($60 a barrel would be nice) oil prices to work. For too many Iraqi politicians that is seen as a more realistic solution than taking on the corruption problems involving who gets paid what by the government. Because of the continued corruption and deficit spending, recovery from the recession will take longer. GDP is expected to grow by 1.2 percent in 2021 and about four percent in 2022 and 2024. Before covid19 (2019) GDP was growing at 4.5 percent a year. The continued reluctance of government officials to deal with the corruption means the popular protests will continue.
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Dealing with problems involving Iran or Turkey are also being avoided. Iranian sponsored violence in Iraq or interference in the economy are opposed by most Iraqis. This does not motivate Iraqi politicians to act and that is causing more and more popular discontent. That’s fine with Iran because a government collapse would provide Iran with more opportunities to expand it control in Iraq.

Ramita Navai has been reporting for years on the rise of Shia militias in Iraq, their links to Iran and allegations of abuses carried out against Sunni civilians. In her latest documentary for FRONTLINE, Iraq’s Assassins, Navai investigates accusations that these militias have unleashed a wave of assassinations against activists and critics. In the runup to the film’s February 9 premiere, FRONTLINE spoke with Navai about her past reporting and what had changed when she returned to Iraq in September 2020.

What she found surprised her: “When I first covered [the militias], even though we were exposing Shia militia abuses, they were still very much seen as heroes, especially by the Shia population,” Navai said. “That has completely changed.” She says she wasn’t expecting “how, in these few years, they’re now viewed with absolute fear and they’re viewed as villains. They’re no longer seen as the heroes they once were.”
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Below, Navai discusses the mass protests in Iraq, the Iran-backed Shia militias now accused of killing their critics and why the militias view activists as a threat.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.