More than twenty years after the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the question of whether his removal was worthwhile no longer attracts significant attention in Iraq. The Shiite Islamist parties, desperate to cover up their own failures of governance, have long tried to frighten the public with the possibility of a return of the Baath Party. But by now it is clear to almost everyone that the chances of that happening are virtually non-existent.
Today most Iraqis are far more concerned about something else. They want to see the post-2003 political system perform the tasks that matter most to them: improving living conditions through better services and economic opportunities.
A 2023 survey by the Arab Barometer, a research network focusing on the Arab world, indicated that about 50 percent of Iraqis do not care what type of government rules them as long as it can fix the economic problems they face. At the same time, about 68 percent of respondents in the same poll said they believed that a democratic system is the best option, despite the challenges facing their country.
The current system has failed in many ways, economically as well as politically. Among the most serious of these has been Iraq’s incorporation into the Iranian sphere of influence. Along the way Baghdad has also lost the United States as a strategic ally.
And yet, despite all this, there are still some positive aspects of the post-2003 order established by the Americans.
The most important of these is the constitutionally protected freedom of expression, which has allowed Iraqis – after decades of the suppression of dissent – to get used to the routine exchange of diverse ideas and the understanding of political differences. Although this freedom has come under increasing pressure in recent years, it has nonetheless helped create a public mindset that recognizes diversity and the competition of ideas. This has made a return to a totalitarian model of governance nearly impossible.
After more than twenty years of such openness, Iraqis have adopted psychological, political, and social habits that would make it extremely hard to reimpose a pre-2003 police-state model.
Iraq’s regional neighbors (with the notable exception of Iran) do not appear happy with the transformation that took place in 2003 – not because they were attached to Saddam Hussein’s regime, but because the new Iraqi order has created numerous ongoing problems for them. After 2003, Iraq became a fragile and unstable state in which state institutions coexist with militias, creating great alarm in neighboring states. Iraq turned into a source of cross-border crises, such as the rise of ISIS. Iraq’s militias posed threats to countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Turkey, and were drawn into the internal conflicts of other countries, as happened in Syria. Iraq’s effective incorporation into the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” became the most striking example of the negative consequences of the post-2003 era. Iran’s geopolitical interests came to dominate Iraqi sovereign decision-making in a severe and troubling distortion of statehood not seen in Iraq since its modern formation after World War I.
The prevailing American impression is that overthrowing Saddam Hussein and building a new Iraq on the ruins of his regime was a bad investment. The United States spent money and spilled the blood of its soldiers defending the new system; it invested significant political capital in its consolidation, hoping to turn Iraq into a beacon for the rest of the Middle East – a democratic and economically prosperous state and a close strategic partner demonstrating the value of alliance with the United States.
That didn’t turn out as Washington had hoped. Even today the U.S. does not feel its embassy in Baghdad is secure, and its citizens, especially its diplomats, cannot move around Iraq without facing the risk of kidnapping or assassination. The most glaringly negative fact for the United States is that despite doing so much to build the new Iraqi system, that system ultimately aligned itself with Washington’s primary regional adversary: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Even so, there remains one important and positive aspect of America’s Iraqi experience: the difficult and costly process the United States set in motion in Iraq may be creating the preconditions for positive new paths. For one thing, over the past two decades Iraqis have learned a crucial lesson: most have now abandoned the illusion of Shiite political Islam and the identity politics it brought with it. (An ideology, by the way, that was initially supported by the United States.) In Iraq today, slowly but clearly, a new form of nationalism is emerging. It is based on the rejection of identity-based politics and regards Iran as a de facto occupying force whose weight is felt by the majority of the population – even if they fear naming or confronting it due to the dominance of Iran’s Iraqi allies over politics and security. The October 2019 protests were the first bold declaration of this nationalism, which the U.S. administration at the time recognized only superficially.
The current system is experiencing intensifying economic and structural political crises. Its popular legitimacy is declining, not least because of its refusal to undertake serious, wide-ranging reforms to combat corruption and dismantle the rentier economy. And as most of the Middle East moves toward a path of development, cooperation, and regional integration, Iraq under Shiite political Islam, which refuses to exit Iran’s orbit, will find itself isolated regionally and domestically. At that point, most likely, a new Iraqi trajectory will begin, led by numerous local forces seeking to write a new chapter in Iraq’s story, one free from Iranian domination. Perhaps, if these forces truly learn from the failures of the past twenty years, the country may finally, after much hardship and loss, find its way onto the right track.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Akeel Abbas
Akeel Abbas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Iraq Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs, focuses on national and religious identities, modernity, and democratization in the Middle East.
