Who is going to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister?
This is probably the biggest question in the Middle East in early November 2021.
On the evening of November 6, local time, three drones flew over Baghdad, the iraqi capital, and their destination was the prime minister's official residence.
Although two of them were shot down on the way, the last drone eventually reached its destination and exploded there, killing six bodyguards.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi had a slight cut on his left hand, barely unharmed.
Iraq's current Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Khadimi, became Prime Minister of Iraq in May 2020, the fourth Prime Minister since the implementation of the 2005 Constitution. Image source: Bloomberg
However, this is not as simple as a failed assassination operation.
This is because Iraq is experiencing electoral controversy, and just the day before the assassination, demonstrators dissatisfied with the election results stormed the "green zone". Soon after the assassination, two Iraqi security officials and three sources said the attack was backed by Iran.
As a result, things have moved in a more complex and sensitive direction, and the situation in the Middle East has once again aroused global vigilance.
Shortly after the assassination, the United States, Russia, China and the United Nations Security Council all expressed strong condemnation for the first time, and Iran maintained the same attitude.
Clearly, all Countries are aware that, at this very moment, a crisis is probably brewing in Iraq.
First of all, in space, whether it is drones or demonstrators, they have hit the "green zone".
The so-called "green zone" is the international zone located in Baghdad, which has been the seat of the Iraqi government and embassies abroad since the United States entered Iraq, and is also the area where the head of government lives. The attack on the heart of the country is a major event for any country.
The "green zone" in Baghdad was originally derived from military terminology and has since been habitually preserved. Image source: voanews.com
In terms of timing, Iraq is currently in the immediate aftermath of the National Assembly elections.
It was a widely controversial election. In the preliminary vote count, the Sadrist Movement, led by Shiite religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr, won the first place with 73 seats.
But at this point, the Fatah Alliance, a group of Shiite militias, refused to accept the election results because of the dwindling number of seats, arguing that the election was a violation and demanding a recount.
When the Fatah coalition's demands were rejected by the electors, Iraq entered a lengthy electoral tug-of-war until demonstrations and assassinations followed.
Thus, the assassination of the Iraqi prime minister is more like a projection of the issue of domestic political parties.
There are many political parties in Iraq, and there are currently more than 200 political parties, forming a coalition of political parties. Most of these parties are secular carriers of Shia thought.
During Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraq was a Sunni state, and Shiites were suppressed and persecuted. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq's Shiite majority was liberated. Currently, 64 percent of Iraqis are Shia Muslims, compared with only 34 percent of Sunni Muslims.
The proportion of religion in Iraq is Shia in pink and Sunni in green. 98 percent of Iraq's Kurds are Sunni Muslims, and they own autonomous regions in Iraq. Image source: Wikipedia
In today's Iraqi National Assembly, the two largest political coalitions are the National League (NIA), the largest coalition of Shiite parties and the Kurdish Coalition for Democratic Patriotism (DPAK), which is a coalition of Kurdish parties, which are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
The aforementioned party, the Sadr Movement, is a member of the National Coalition, and under Iraq's constitution, the leader of the coalition, who holds the most seats in parliament, will first be asked to serve as prime minister, but the coalition can be adjusted and amended thereafter. The Fatah Alliance is clearly unhappy that Sadr's faction has the upper hand.
Sadr is well known in Iraq, and his famous quote is:
"Saddam Hussein is a small snake, and America is a big snake." （Saddam was the little serpent, but America is the big serpent.）
After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, Sadder spearheaded opposition to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, gained popular support, and was called populist in the West. In domestic politics, he quickly rose to prominence as the most popular politician in the name of anti-corruption and represented the interests of the Shiite elite.
What the pro-Sadr people saw during the march in 2018. Image source: Associated Press
On the surface, the Fatah Alliance does not seem to differ much from Sadr's position, which is made up of militia forces, and Sadr has also led militias and death squads. Even the Al-Sadiqoun clique in the Fatah Alliance, whose predecessor was separated from Sadr's past militias.
However, the Fatah Alliance is closely related to Iran, and there are many reports that the Sadikun Group has received training from Iran's Quds Force. Hadi al Amiri, the leader of the Fatah Alliance, is like Sadr but has been at loggerheads with Iran and Syria. He was fluent in Persian, loved the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and even opposed the Iraqi regime in the Iran-Iraq War.
In Emily's eyes, Saddell is the next Saddam, and in Sadr's eyes, Amiri is a proper "foreign power".
Because of its ambiguous relationship with Iran, the Fatah alliance has long been seen as An iranian infiltration of Iraq, which is why the assassination is suspected of being related to Iran.
So, is Iran really the "black hand behind this assassination"?
Iran and Iraq are geographically close, with a 1,200-kilometer border between them, and both are Middle Eastern powers, making it almost impossible to avoid friction.
The relative geographical location of Iran and Iraq, the "Iran-Iraq War" was mainly carried out on both sides of the border.
For example, in the 1980s, the two countries broke out in the eight-year-long "Iran-Iraq War", one of the reasons was the border dispute.
Geographically, both Iraq and Iran have outlets to the Persian Gulf, but are separated on either side of the Shatai Shatt al-Arab, with Iraq to the west and Iran to the east. Vying for control of this important boundary river, the two countries fought.
The Shatt al-Arab, formed by the confluence of the famous Euphrates and Tigris rivers, forms the southern tip of iraq's border with Iran and up to the Persian Gulf. Image source: VOX
On the other hand, the political turning point in the two countries has also had an important impact on the relations between the two countries.
In 1979, the Islamic Revolution broke out in Iran, the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown, and the theocratic system replaced the relatively enlightened monarchy of the past.
Around the same time, Saddam Hussein took over as Iraqi president and began a dictatorship that preached Sunnis and brutally suppressed Shiites.
When the Islamic Revolution broke out in Iran in 1979, people held up pictures of Khomeini and demanded that the king step down. After Khomeini came to power, the country was renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran, the king went into exile in the United States, the Iranian people occupied the U.S. Embassy in Iran, and the two countries broke off diplomatic relations.
Iran, which has just experienced turmoil, is weaker, and Iraq wants to take advantage of this time to strike Iran. The two countries have contradictions in religion and borders, and the two countries are also very different in terms of nationality. Iranians are mostly Persians, while Iraq is mostly Arab, ethnic differences make it easier for Iraq to incite hatred of Iran, and the war began under multiple contradictions.
The course of the "Iran-Iraq War" was quite tragic, dealing a great blow to both countries. Neither of these two Middle Eastern powers has the ability to eliminate the other, nor does it have a repressive advantage. Finally, in July 1988, the two countries each accepted the mediation of the United Nations.
With the collapse of Saddam's regime in 2003, the Shiites in Iraq grew, and Iran found an opportunity to influence Iraq. However, at that time, the US military was still in Iraq, and Iran could only see stitches and needles.
After his arrest, Saddam Hussein went through a three-year trial before finally being sentenced to death by hanging in 2006. Image credit: Foreign Affairs
The United States brought democracy to Iraq, which may be a good thing for Iraq, but even better for Iran. That's because Shiites, after all, have a majority in Iraq, and Iran, as the largest Shiite country in the Middle East, is certainly happy to see such a favorable situation.
When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, extreme Sunni groups in Iraq, fearing a Shiite counterattack, began a joint attack on Iraq with the Islamic State (ISIS). Taking advantage of this opportunity, Iran began to throw an olive branch to Iraq, help fight terrorist groups, and make Iraq's Shiites stronger.
Islamic State's territorial claims in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State pursues ultra-conservative fundamentalist Wahhabism that has led to more than a decade of war in Syria and Iraq, with the last stronghold breached in 2019 and the remnants of Wahhabis now scattered across the Middle East.
Beginning in 2011, Iraq was again embroiled in a protracted war until 2017. Against the backdrop of the war, Iraq's economy was devastated, its people were poor, its cultural relics were destroyed, and millions of people became refugees. And the government that has been in the midst of war is very corrupt.
In fact, before the arrival of the epidemic in 2020, the iraqi government's autonomy was already very weak.
There is the influence of the United States, Iran and other big powers on the outside, populism and corruption on the inside, and weak and inefficient government capabilities. Since Saddam Hussein's overthrow, Iraq has been one of the lowest levels of political corruption in the world.
Therefore, in 2019, large-scale public protests and demonstrations broke out in Iraq, causing huge social unrest.
Today, Iraq is at a crossroads. One option is a strongman politics like Sadr, taking Saddam's path again. Another option is to continue the chaos and be at the mercy of others.
40 years ago, Iran was the one who was turbulent and chaotic, and Iraq was once internally united, and now the situation has been reversed. To be sure, no matter which way Iraq takes, the light is dim.
Why is this happening? What went wrong?
The assassination of the Iraqi Prime Minister is essentially a manifestation of the fragility of the country's democratic system. However, the democratic system, in such a place where wars and chaos are frequent, the religious atmosphere is strong, and the rule of law is lacking, it cannot bring order and is useless.
Whether it is the Sadikon Group, the Sadr Movement or the Fatah Alliance, they are all born out of militias and have long been militarily powerful. Thus, the so-called National Assembly has no authority in this case: problems that can be solved with the barrel of a gun are difficult to solve by consultation.
The decay of democracy is often reflected in the non-recognition of electoral results. However, different countries have different reactions when they experience electoral turmoil.
The United States, as the most powerful democracy in the world, also encountered questions of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, and also experienced extreme behavior that hit the Capitol.
At the time, many feared that American society would be torn apart and the Civil War would be repeated.
But the authority of the law, the process, and the long-standing habit of consultation and compromise ultimately saved america. The fraud accusations soon disappeared and the United States returned to normal track.
In January 2020, Trump supporters dissatisfied with the election results demonstrated in front of the US Capitol, which was later broken into.
The same turmoil in Myanmar is not at all the case.
In the 2020 Myanmar parliamentary elections, the National League for Democracy won the vast majority of seats, and the military-controlled Gongfa Party, which claimed electoral fraud, staged a military coup d'état and detained and imprisoned the head of government. Next, the military began violently suppressing the population, blocking the Internet, and ending Myanmar's brief path to democratization.
In contrast, the situation in Iraq is much more serious.
Burma used to be a British colony, and the foundations of democracy and the rule of law have been going on for a long time. Moreover, the attitude of the countries around Myanmar towards Myanmar is relatively moderate, far stronger than that of the war-torn Middle East.
Iraq is not only internally fragmented and fragmented by ethnic and sectarian groups, but also faces a rapidly changing situation in the Middle East, and any turmoil threatens to turn into a disaster in the future.
The United States wants to establish democracy in Iraq in the post-Saddam era, which has proved to be a luxury.
The assassination of Iraq's prime minister is far from the first political turmoil caused by elections. As early as the 2005 parliamentary elections, Iraqi Sunnis launched more than 100 attacks on polling stations, killing more than 40 people; the turnout in the 2010 parliamentary elections was lower than in 2005, at 62.4 per cent.
In 2021, Iraq's electoral turnout hit a new low of just 41 percent, compared with just over 30 percent in the capital Baghdad. It can be seen that the people have distrusted this "form" of democracy. When the "shell" of democracy is abandoned, the state may fall into the darkest abyss.
In the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index, the darker the country, the more corrupt it is, with Iraq ranking 160 out of 179 countries. Image source: transparency.org
In human history, the decay of democracy has been the norm. Democracy itself is not a positive word, nor a pejorative word, but a neutral word.
Democracy may shine brightest when a country has a good foundation for the rule of law and a long tradition of consultation and grassroots self-organization, while conversely democracy is likely to bring about anarchic chaos or the most tyrannical dictators.
It wasn't just drones or a few extremists who assassinated Iraq's prime minister, but Iraq's fragile and broken system.