Iraq’s new prime minister needs foreign friends. But he has to work out who they are

Mustafa al-Kadhimi needs every bit of help he can get. Yet his international backers are often working at cross-purposes, writes Borzou Daragahi

Mustafa al-Kadhimi's Iraq remains squeezed by the US-Iran confrontation (Reuters)

In a move that has not yet been publicly announced but will be hailed by civil society activists and human rights monitors, Iraq’s reform-minded prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has decided to disband the so-called Baghdad Preservation Forces.  

The Interior Ministry branch was formed less than a year ago by Kadhimi’s  predecessor Adel Abdul-Mahdi amid a wave of anti-government protests. Its original aim was to “protect” the demonstrators from harm. Instead, it served as a sort of praetorian guard for Baghdad’s political elite, harassing and brutalising peaceful protesters clamouring for change.  

Kadhimi had said a month ago he was going to restructure the force after a video emerged in late July showing members of the group torturing an adolescent boy, Hamed Saeed, who was among the tens of thousands of protesters who have taken part in nationwide rallies against the corrupt network of political parties and militias that dominate Iraq today.  

Now Iraqi media outlets are reporting that Kadhimi is going to get rid of the force altogether, and merge its personnel into the regular police.  

The reported dissolution comes after French president Emmanuel Macron paid Kadhimi a visit, and the former Iraqi leader’s meeting with the US president Donald Trump last month. This shows the effectiveness of giving Kadhimi credible diplomatic backing as he takes up the Herculean task of rebuilding a nation devastated by war, paralysed by corruption and riddled with thuggery. But, too often, Iraq’s powerful international players hinder rather than help the cause of change.  

Kadhimi, who came to power promising to fulfill the demands of the protest movement, is taking a cautious approach. He understands keenly that he’s walking a perilous tightrope and that at any moment he could be felled by the various local and international forces arrayed against him. They include powerful neighbours such as Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as well as world powers including the US and Russia, which all have interests in Iraq.  

He’s wisely going after easier targets first, building up his credibility among the Iraqi people, the international community and the honest members of the security forces and Iraqi bureaucracy. In recent days, forces under his command launched raids on criminal gangs in the unruly south of the country, seizing explosives, guns, narcotics and a grenade launcher.  

“The government has inherited a heavy legacy of uncontrolled weapons and tribal struggles, which pose a real threat to the community and hamper the rebuilding and development efforts,” Kadhimi said last week.

Kadhimi has also replaced several provincial security chiefs amid widespread accusations of abuse of power. Following the devastating 4 August explosion at the port of Beirut, he created a commission that ordered the removal of at least 10 containers full of “highly dangerous substances” stored at the port at Umm Qasr and Baghdad International Airport.  

But much bigger challenges await, and Kadhimi knows it. The most formidable will be reducing the influence of the Iranian-backed militias and their political allies that are arguably the dominant players in the country. A presence since the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime by US and UK forces, they grew enormously powerful during the five-year war against Isis.  

Now they have shown they are willing to do pretty much anything to retain their power; one of the militias was likely behind the brutal 6 July assassination of researcher Husham al-Hashimi, a personal friend of Kadhimi.  

Hashimi’s fate can’t be far from Kadhimi’s mind as he takes on the powerful militias. It was Hashimi’s mere criticism of the militias that likely sealed his fate, and Kadhimi walks a careful line as he outlines his vision.  

“There are some parties that live on chaos and we are working hard to restore the state’s prestige and boost our brave forces’ morale which has been broken recently,” he said during a Cabinet meeting last week. “The ministers have to listen to the demands of the demonstrators, take quick action and be frank with the public regarding the challenges facing the country.”

Kadhimi needs every bit of help he can get. Yet his international backers are often working at cross-purposes. For example, Macron hardly mentioned Iran’s militias during his visit to Baghdad, focusing instead on French “interests,” which for now are concentrated on securing oil deals for its own oligarchs and confronting the regional ambitions of Turkey, whose cross-border raids against Kurdish militants are a major headache for both Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurdistan region in the north.  

During the visit to Washington, Trump administration officials pressured Kadhimi to confront Iran, ignoring the premier’s need to build his own political strength as well as the array of other domestic and international factors that are hampering Iraq’s emergence from a state of permanent crisis.  

“While US policymakers make ambitious demands of Kadhimi, they often fail to appreciate his circumstances,” wrote Iraq experts Lahib Higel and Ramzy Mardini. “The prime minister lacks strong and stable domestic political support. He has no constituency of his own; he is neither the leader of a political party nor a member of one.”

Iran could only benefit economically from a stable and prosperous Iraq as its neighbour, and it has invested in the country as well as made calls for calm and normalcy. But forces aligned with Iran are also using Iraq as a battleground to settle scores with the US, and the number of attacks by suspected pro-Iranian militias on bases housing American military personnel have not abated at all since Kadhimi came to power in May.  

At a 21 July meeting in Tehran with Kadhimi, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was anything but helpful, vowing further action against the Americans for their assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad earlier this year.  

"They killed your guest at your home and they explicitly confessed to this crime,” he said. “This is not a small matter. The Islamic Republic of Iran will never forget this issue, and it will surely strike a reciprocal blow to Americans."

To make matters worse, neither Iran, the US nor France have offered up any significant additional financial help to the fledgling Kadhimi administration, even as they make demands on Kadhimi and use Iraq to pursue their geopolitical aims. All three countries say they’re friends of Iraq, but with friends like these...