A deal announced last week to block essential documents in a British inquiry into the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has come as a great disappointment to Iraqis who had hoped that the inquiry would unveil some of the truth about the war.

Many Iraqis had also expected that the Iraq Inquiry, called the Chilcot Inquiry, would provide enough evidence about the disinformation and lies used by the then British prime minister Tony Blair and US president George W Bush to launch the war for this to be used to take the US and British governments before an international tribunal.

The Iraq Inquiry was commissioned by Blair’s successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, in 2009 to “identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict.” One key issue was for the inquiry to settle whether Blair had assured Bush of British support in the war even though he knew that information about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was either false or misleading.

The controversy goes back to Blair’s backing for Bush in the conflict and its aftermath. Blair, who was called “Bush’s poodle” by the British tabloid newspapers, stated in September 2002 that it had been established “beyond doubt” that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction.

Although both Blair and Bush claimed the war on Iraq was necessary to protect the world from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, none of these weapons has ever been found. It is now well established that the invasion had less to do with self-defence than with dominating the oil-rich nation and playing havoc with the Middle East.

The inquiry was initiated in response to criticisms of the British role in the war in which 179 British soldiers were killed and 6,000 wounded. British commentators have billed the Iraq conflict as the worst error in British foreign policy since the disastrous failure of the Suez War on Egypt in 1956.

The decision to withhold details of correspondence, however, has raised concerns that the Chilcot Inquiry has capitulated to the demands of the British and the US governments and confirmed suspicions of a whitewash that will undermine the credibility of the long-anticipated final report.

While the failure to publish the entire correspondence will anger families of the British victims and many in Britain who want to know if they were misled by their prime minister and his administration, many Iraqis will feel they have been denied an opportunity to expose the heinous crimes that have been perpetrated against their country with the knowledge and encouragement of some in the international community.

The disclosure of the roles and responsibilities of those who orchestrated and executed the war could have opened a window of opportunity for Iraqi victims of abuses committed during the war and subsequent occupation to take such crimes to courts in European countries that extend their jurisdiction beyond their territorial limits.

Nine years of US occupation have left Iraq in ruins and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and mass human rights violations. Many international legal experts have argued that abuses by US troops in Iraq and military contractors have been systematic and widespread enough to be taken to the International Criminal Court.

Following the US troop withdrawal in 2011, Iraq has remained a fragile state deeply riven by civil strife. Acts of abuse perpetrated by the Iraqi security forces, rebels and sectarian militias as part of the political conflict are also widely considered to be worthy of prosecution by an international war crimes tribunal.

However, most of the Iraqi victims of the war and occupation have been forgotten, and the post-invasion Iraqi authorities have failed to unearth most of the crimes of the past and bring their perpetrators to justice. The failure to find closure to this issue has triggered a debate on whether the war-wracked nation will now be able to restore peace without meeting demands for justice from the victims and their families.

Some rulings have brought hope for the Iraqi victims of abuses. In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights issued a landmark judgement in the universal application of human rights in a case involving the killings of Iraqi civilians by UK soldiers. The court held that Britain had violated the European Convention on Human Rights in its failure to adequately investigate its soldiers’ abuses in Iraq during the occupation.

Moreover, the British Court of Appeal has agreed to start hearing demands for a public inquiry about grave allegations of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq. The ruling is important, as the British government will be obliged to accept that human rights law applies to its acts anywhere in the world and that its soldiers are duty-bound to protect civilians.

Also in 2011, a judge in Spain announced plans to question Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and three Iraqi military officers in a probe into the deaths of 34 people at an Iranian exile camp in Iraq. Spain launched an independent probe into the 2009 deaths of the Iranian exiles under the universal justice doctrine which it says allows it to prosecute grave crimes committed in other countries.

Under the Spanish ruling, Al-Maliki will be “automatically summoned” to appear before the court when his term as prime minister ends and his judicial immunity expires. The ruling by the Spanish court is supremely important, and its significance lies in making it clear that Spanish national human rights obligations do not end at the country’s borders.

As expected, the United States, which is not a party to the International Criminal Court or to the Geneva Conventions that provide protection to the civilians under occupation or during military operations, has routinely claimed immunity for its soldiers and sometimes for foreign security guards working in Iraq as well.

Only a few low-ranking American soldiers have faced trials for various crimes in Iraq, and the US judiciary has repeatedly refused to back attempts to have the courts open investigations into potential American war crimes in the country.

In 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled that a group of former detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq would not be able to sue military contractors who had participated in torture and other illegal acts of abuse at the US-run detention facility in 2003 and 2004.

The case of 250 former Abu Ghraib detainees raised the issue of whether private contractors hired by the US military to perform services in a conflict zone may be held accountable for participating in acts of torture and other war crimes.

Evidence from the Chilcot Inquiry had suggested that Blair and his entourage had deceived the British cabinet and public opinion on Iraq by producing “sexed-up” intelligence information to justify the war on Iraq.

However, by now withholding essential information, there is increasing doubt that the Chilcot Inquiry will be able to provide an account of the events that led to the war and identify lessons to guide future British foreign policy decision-making, as is required by its mandate. 

It goes without saying that such an outcome will not satisfy the Iraqi families that lost members to this conflict and the thousands of Iraqis who were subjected to vicious mass crimes during the US occupation and its aftermath. The invasion triggered so much horrific and untold calamities, and allowed the atrocities to grow to such a scale, that they have since plagued Iraq with apparently unstoppable abuses.

Even after the occupation ended, the Iraqi authorities failed to resolve a number of high-profile killings and bring the perpetrators to justice, raising fears that impunity is becoming the norm in Iraq. The Iraqi parliament and successive governments have demonstrated their insensitivity towards considering bringing justice to the victims of Saddam’s era and to those of the US-led invasion and sectarian bloodshed that followed.

There has been much talk over the last few years about how the Iraqi people need justice. But in order to have justice, they need first to establish the full account of the truth of the war in order to fight events in court. In this context, the UK Chilcot Inquiry seems to be just another pointless endeavour that is not expected to help those who seek either truth or justice.

An alliance headed by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has been declared as having received the largest number of seats in Iraq’s elections last month, but many of his political opponents doubt the vote’s fairness and claim massive fraud.

If proved, the allegations of irregularities and vote-rigging will cast shadows over the legitimacy of the new parliament elected on 30 April and may further worsen the decade-long political ructions and sectarian violence that have been largely blamed on the nation’s political class.

Iraq’s Independent Higher Election Commission (IHEC) announced on Monday that Al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance had won 92 out of 328 parliamentary seats. His main rivals finished with between nine and 34 seats overall. Smaller blocs received between one and six seats.

A potential new prime minister would need the support of a total of 165 members. Negotiations to build a coalition to form a new government will likely drag on for weeks, if not months, observers say.

Prior to the IHEC’s announcement, several political leaders and blocs made complaints about alleged electoral fraud and warned of dire consequences to come.

Former prime minister Iyad Allawi talked about “irregularities” comitted during the polling process and slammed the IHEC as biased. He also claimed to have won the majority of votes in Baghdad.

“The commission is not qualified to run the elections,” Allawi said at a press conference, accusing Al-Maliki of having prevented him from securing top place in the polls.

The leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Ammar Al-Hakim, warned of “rigging or irregularities” in the polls, calling on the commission to work in a more professional way.

Al-Hakim, whose Al-Muwatin, or Citizen, bloc came third in the elections with 29 seats, had threatened a “decisive response” if the results of the elections were “illogical”. Early unofficial results showed that the bloc had won more than 40 seats.

The Al-Ahrar Bloc which is affiliated to the popular Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr came second with 34 seats and pointed the finger at Al-Maliki’s bloc for alleged fraud and warned it would go to court to challenge the results.

Sunni groups also complained of election mishaps, claiming forgery had been used in favour of candidates supported by Al-Maliki. Another complaint was that systematic efforts had been made to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Sunnis in flashpoints around Baghdad.

The Arabia Alliance of Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Al-Mutleq appealed for the United Nations and the Arab League to carry out investigations.

The Kurdish parties also exchanged accusations of fraud. While the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its allies accused the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of rigging the elections in Sulaimaniya, the latter said it had registered irregularities in Erbil, the stronghold of the KDP.

In response, the IHEC rubbished allegations of fraud at the polls, insisting that the balloting had been handled in a professional and transparent way. However, it said it had received some 2,030 complaints.

The main bone of contention has been the Al-Maliki government’s direct or procedural interference in the elections. Reported irregularities include the unfair use of state resources and bribery to induce voters.

A video widely circulated on social networks showed a member Al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance inducing voters in a southern province to vote for his bloc in exchange for plots of land, saying that he was speaking on behalf of Al-Maliki.

During the election campaign Al-Maliki himself was filmed distributing title deeds for plots of land owned by the government.

Al-Maliki’s coalition had largely based its electoral campaign on promising government jobs, especially in the police and the army which are under Al-Maliki’s direct control.

“They used political money and did not refrain from using the state apparatus and [government] posts and state resources in their campaigns,” Jassim Al-Halfi, an unsuccessful candidate for the Civil and Democratic Alliance, wrote on his Facebook page.

The blocs also deplored what they called the polarisation and bias of the state-owned media during the elections. State-run television was widely seen as being supportive of Al-Maliki through broadcasts including live coverage of his campaign.

Some of the irregularities that are believed to have occurred involved assisting illiterate voters to cast their ballots. There are more than six million illiterate people in Iraq, and the media noted a worryingly high number of assisted voters in many polling stations, where ballots were marked in favour of Al-Maliki’s candidates.

In some cases it was reported that literate people were told to claim they were illiterate so that they could be assisted by Al-Maliki’s staff. 

The complaints also included ballot stuffing, intimidation, stealing or destroying ballot boxes and threatening election officials.

There have been numerous reports of Al-Maliki’s using the soaring violence that has hit Iraq to ensure his success. Voting was halted in a third of Anbar, where Sunni insurgents control the city of Fallujah and parts of the western desert province.

“By prolonging the crisis [in Fallujah] he has benefited his allies,” said Liqaa Wardi, a Sunni member of the outgoing parliament.

Ameer Al-Kinani of the Sadrist Movement accused the commission of fabricating results in Abu Ghraib, a Sunni-dominated district. He doubted the reported 90 per cent turn out and 80 per cent support for Al-Maliki in this hotbed of anti-government resistance west of Baghdad.

In Maysan, a stronghold of the Sadrist Movement which had won the two previous national and provincial elections, Al-Maliki surprisingly won four seats over the Sadrists who received only three. 

Among other allegations of fraud by the ruling Al-Maliki bloc has been forcing military and security personnel to vote for the prime minister. The uniformed services, whose leaders are under the command of Al-Maliki, voted a week earlier in a special vote as they were to be on duty during the elections.

More police are alleged to have registered to vote than are on the state payroll.

Some of the charges of irregularities have been leveled against the IHEC itself. Following the announcement of the results, Al-Hakim’s bloc accused the commission of tampering with some of the ballot boxes. It also pointed to pressure put on the commission to disqualify some of the candidates

There is no information about how many of the ballot papers were printed or if they were in line with international standards, raising concerns of the accountability of the unused ballots.

In some cases the commission was reported to have paid non-state broadcasters large amounts of money to put a positive spin on the elections and praise the commission.

Most blocs also complained about delays in releasing the results, which they said had probably been used to change them.

The commission has denied the charges, with chief commissioner Sarbast Mustafa saying it had annulled the results of 300 polling stations for reported violations and that more than 1,000 electoral workers had been referred to the judicial authorities for investigation.

It said it had made it obligatory for all Iraqis to receive electronic voting cards in order to cast their ballots. Voters were also asked to dip their fingers in indelible ink to prevent double voting.

Doubts have also been raised about the monitoring of the elections. The commission said some 350 foreign observers had participated in monitoring the elections, in addition to thousands of election monitors representative of Iraq’s competing political parties themselves.

However, the IHEC banned one of the prominent observation groups from monitoring the elections after it had criticised its pre-balloting arrangements. On Monday, the Shams Network for Election Monitoring reported massive irregularities, including ballot stuffing in Baghdad in favour of Al-Maliki’s bloc.

Both the United Nations and the United States welcomed the results. The US embassy in Baghdad described the elections as “another milestone in the democratic development of Iraq,” but neither the UN nor the US talked about the credibility of the elections.

Electoral fraud has not been uncommon in post-Saddam Iraq. In the previous two polls, held when Iraq was still under US occupation, talk of fraud was common even if it was not reported in the mainstream western press, which was too busy trumpeting Iraq’s so-called nascent democracy.

Iraq’s elections have proved once again that they are likely to continue to produce a sectarian wasteland instead of a genuine democracy or a stable and crisis-free Iraq.

If the results of last month’s polls mean anything, they prove that power-hungry politicians will continue to use sectarianism as their driving force, even through a parliament whose legitimacy is increasingly in doubt.