Iraqis protest against unemployment and lack of public services in Baghdad, 27 July 2018. Picture by Ameer Al Mohammedaw/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. Iraq arguably entered a new phase of ‘post-sectarianism’ since 2015. This was evident during the popular protests that began in the summer of 2015 and returned significantly in the summer of 2018 – when Iraqi political activism transformed from identity politics to being issue based. This showed that the protests are driven by frustration and demands for improving the poor public services and the high unemployment figures, rather than the usual politically led religious and ethnic differences. Specifically, the transition was motivated by the failure of the ethnic-sectarian political class in providing efficient public services, education, health care, security and development necessary for society. Is this enough to say that we are in an era of ‘post-sectarianism’?
What is ‘sectarian Iraq’?
Sectarian Iraq refers to post-2003 when the country fell to the US-led invasion and witnessed the installation of a political class which appoints its high-profile governmental posts and cabinet based on an ethnic-sectarian quota: a Shiite Arab Prime Minister, a Kurdish President and a Sunni Arab Speaker of Parliament, to satisfy the power determinations of the leading common political parties of the three largest communities.
The ethnic-sectarian quota-based governance in Iraq had a number of consequences throughout the years. It turned Iraq into a sectarian regional battlefield between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as Turkey when it comes to issues related to the Kurds and Turkmens. Furthermore, political parties used ethnic-sectarian differences to mobilize communities against one another, which directly harmed the Iraqi societal relations. This was mainly witnessed during the height of the sectarian conflict between 2006-2008 and during the 2014 fall of Mosul in the hands of the extremist group known as the Islamist State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Daesh.
