Iraqis are resorting to poetry and songs to vent their frustrations with those in power, writesSalah Nasrawi

One video shows folk poets mocking vote-buying candidates. In another a poet is cheered by a huge crowd as he scorns corrupt politicians, and in a third a popular singer laments Iraq’s decay in the post-US invasion era.

Eleven years after the US-led invasion that ousted former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime and promised a democratic and free nation, Iraqis are still struggling with a decade of a failed state.

Iraqi folk poets and singers are increasingly taking the lead in voicing their resistance to their incompetent leaders amid mounting popular frustrations over failures to restore security, rampant corruption and poor basic services.

The rising voices of protests in poetry and sung-verse also come ahead of parliamentary elections in April, which many Iraqis perceive as being crucial in deciding their country’s future as the Sunni insurrection and Kurdish pro-independence sentiments intensify. 

The protests reflect a growing anger among Iraqis over their leaders who are seen as useless politicians exploiting ethno-sectarian divisions in their favour to grab more power.  

On Saturday, the country’s election commission disqualified dozens of candidates in the April elections for having criminal records including, theft, drug trafficking, bribery and prostitution.

What is phenomenal about this emerging vocal expression of defiance to the Shia-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is that the performers are mostly Shia and their criticism revolves around their politicians’ betrayal of Shia ideals.

Of the many reasons behind the frustration and anger is a new retirement law which was passed last week and allowed MPs to secure lavish benefits for themselves.

Many Iraqis believe the law is unconstitutional because it discriminates against the majority of Iraqis by exempting the privileged political elite from the government’s pension scale.

Only 166 MPs in the 325-member parliament endorsed the controversial legislation.

Videos circulating on Iraqi online media and social networks show clips of laughing audiences reacting to poets who mock sleazy lawmakers and politicians.

Their harshly-worded criticisms reflect growing anger over the nation’s presently wide wealth gap, created mostly by greed of the country’s political establishment. 

In one of the videos recorded in the southern city of Nassiriya two poets are seen engaged in a public poetry debate about the coming elections, which many Iraqis fear will bring the same corrupt politicians back to parliament.

The scene: a pavement in mid-town where the poet mimics a candidate who appeals to pedestrians:

For God’s sake, vote for me.

If you vote, you will receive a blanket,

A heater,

I will make you live like sultans,

I will send you up, up, up…

Vote for me!

The other poet in the debate, who emerges from the unconvinced audience, strikes back:

We don’t trust you any more,

Our votes will never be yours.

We abhor you.

If you ever come back we will burn you in acid,

You, cheater, liar,

You’ve eaten the flesh and left us the bones.

That’s not the worst of it, however. In a second video distributed widely over the social networks the “betrayal” of the Shias’ most revered imam Ali is how poet Hazim Jabir describes the excess of the country’s Shia politicians, and the designation is more than a rhetorical flourish: 

Are you not ashamed?

In the name of faith,

You’ve abandoned the faith.

You, rulers who pray,

You murder people and go to perform prayers in their blood,

To whom do you belong?

Your seats are more important than your people,

Haven’t you had enough? 

Tomorrow, doomsday, when you meet Ali,

What are you going to tell him?

He starved to feed the hungry,

And now we starve, and you are never satisfied.

Many of the poems have been turned into songs and performances that cut through the hegemony of patriarchal political discourse and are inserted into the fabric of daily life.

In one favourite song, singer Hassan Al-Rassam lambasts the politicians who are removed from the very people they have promised to serve: 

You are just worthless thieves,

Idiot who trusts a thief,

You’ve got the best of everything,

Leaving us with nothing.

If anyone raises a question,

A bullet hits him in the forehead.

Why has the world turned upside down?

By displaying the power of such verses and music to resist the country’s political class which is enriching itself at the expense of the rest of the people, Iraqi poets and singers are adding a powerful voice to a discontented public in a way that written expression cannot do.  

Throughout the present period of deep distress and national calamity, Iraqis have had the opportunity to express their limited freedom of expression through the independent media and online social networks.

But increasing pressure on the independent media and threats to writers has lent the opportunity to poets and singers to resort to older traditions of connecting with people and embracing social and political issues.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Iraq on Monday a bomb struck a newspaper office in Baghdad after its editor had received threats from Shia groups for publishing a cartoon of Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which was seen as offensive.

Last week, Iraq’s judiciary issued a warrant for the arrest of a columnist critical of the government who had allegedly libeled Al-Maliki.

The warrant against Sarmad Al-Taie, who writes a column for the Al-Mada newspaper, was issued under an article of the criminal code that prohibits defaming or insulting government employees.

Another warrant was issued for Munir Haddad, a retired judge who sentenced Saddam to death in 2006 and is now a private lawyer. The warrants are the first against writers or intellectuals since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Last week the Iraqi Ministry of Culture banned a play two days after its debut at the National Theatre in Baghdad. The play “Women Parliament” is critical of MPs who waste their time and public money in doing business, travelling and bickering.  

Critics have also accused the government of using public money to silence criticism and buy the local media.

Local news outlets reported last week that the government-controlled election commission had started funding a television network known to be critical of the government, twisting its reporting to a pro-government stance.

The allegations surfaced after the channel stopped its critical reporting and began putting a favourable spin on its coverage of government news.

The government has also ordered the reopening of the offices of the channel in Baghdad, closed last year after it was accused of spreading misinformation and exaggeration.

However, the government can hardly do anything to muzzle the often spontaneous and fleeting oral forms of expression dealing with Iraq’s dilemmas.

Fearing a backlash and a boycott of the April polling, Shia clerics have warned their congregations against re-electing the same politicians who have “betrayed” them.

On Friday, prayer imams in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala denounced the lucrative retirement benefits for politicians and urged Iraqis not to vote for those MPs who had endorsed the law.

In a country that is terribly polarised and dangerously unstable, a large-scale boycott could erode the legitimacy of the already fragile political process and result in far more deadlock and even bloodshed.

Meanwhile, true to their traditions which, some say, go back to ancient Sumeria, Iraqi folk poets and vocal artists are expected to remain within the mainstream of political critique and mobilisation.

Thanks to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s plans for new provincial divisions the country’s continuing unity is under threat, writes Salah Nasrawi

There was no referendum, no opinion polls, and no cross-party or public debate, as there usually is when genuine democracies inform people about their choices so that they can make decisions and accept responsibilities.

The announcement by Iraq’s Shia-led government last week of plans to create several new provinces, some of them from contested parts of the country, has taken most Iraqis by surprise and renewed fears of Iraq’s “soft partitioning”.

It also comes amid reports that preparations are underway with international backing to declare Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan Region independent within the next five years.

Iraq’s latest conflict began on 21 January when the government announced plans to turn Tuz Khurmatu and Talafar, two towns which fall inside Iraq’s so-called “disputed territories” which are claimed by almost all Iraq’s mosaic of different ethnicities, into new provinces.

Two days later the government said it also planned to turn three more districts into governorates, including Fallujah, a district in Anbar, Iraq’s largest province and a stronghold of Sunni resistance against the Shia-dominated government.

Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki described the decision, taken by a majority of his ministers, as being “irreversible” because he said it was “constitutional and lawful.” Iraq is currently divided into 18 muhafazat, or governorates. Three of these constitute the northern Kurdistan Region and the rest are under the central government’s control.

In explaining why it wanted to establish the new governorates, the government said the districts were large enough in area and population to be upgraded to the status of provinces. It said the new arrangements would help to boost economic development in the provinces and provide better services and social care to their populations.

Yet, the government’s plans for a new provincial map of Iraq have opened up many challenges on both the local and national levels. Many Iraqis question their policy objectives, legitimacy and timing.

Under the plans, which need to be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, Tuz Khurmatu, a district dominated by Shia Muslims of Turkmen ethnicity and annexed to the Sunni Arab-dominated Salah Al-Din province, is to be a separate province.

Another town whose inhabitants are also mostly Shia Muslims of Turkmen ethnicity, Talafar, now controlled by Nineveh, a Sunni Arab-dominated province, is also to be declared a separate governorate.

Since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 that toppled the Sunni-controlled regime of former president Saddam Hussein both Tuz Khurmatu and Talafar have been subjected to frequent bombings by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, and the plan reawakens hopes that they will now assume their own security and governance.

It came as no surprise that the Turkmens, who are Iraq’s third-largest ethnicity, hailed their upgrading as an opportunity for greater political influence alongside the country’s Kurds and Arabs.

Leaders of the Turkmen community, which has been complaining of marginalisation in recent years, urged the national parliament to quickly endorse the government plans.

Iraq’s Christian minority, which has also been complaining of exclusion and discrimination, hailed the decision to turn the largely Christian populated Nineveh areas into a province as a blessing.

Some Iraqi Christians have called for a separate Christian “federal entity” in these areas of northern Iraq in the hope that they could thereby gain greater autonomy, security and political status.

But the Kurds, who had hoped that the three would-be provinces would become part of their autonomous region, have voiced strong reservations to the move, which has been vetoed by Kurdish cabinet ministers.

Though the Kurdistan Regional Government has refrained from commenting on the plans thus far, Kurdish MPs slammed them as unconstitutional and politically motivated.  

Meanwhile, Sunni Arabs in Nineveh railed against the plans, which will take both Talafar and the Plain of Nineveh from the largely Sunni Arab populated province.

Governor Atheel Al-Nujaifi of Nineveh said he would ask the provincial council to declare Nineveh a federal region if the parliament moved ahead and approved the plans.

Sunnis in Anbar also rejected the idea of carving Fallujah out of the already Sunni majority province.

Meanwhile, rival Shia groups have also been lukewarm about the plans, partly because they see them as designed to serve the election campaign of Al-Maliki who is seeking a third term in office in the 30 April polls.

Leader of the Shia Sadrist parliamentary bloc Bahaa Al-Aaraji said the decision would “open the door to the splitting of Iraq.”

A closer look at the plans, however, indicates that the Al-Maliki government’s decision may not be haphazard, as some outside observers had previously suggested. Its intention is to redraw the borders of Iraq’s provinces in case the partitioning of the country becomes inevitable.

Its main goal is apparently to create pockets inhabited by ethnicities other than Kurds that would encircle the Kurdish enclave in the north of the country and bloc its expansion into the disputed territories. 

With calls for Sunni Arab autonomy within a federal Iraqi state gaining strength, the plans also aim at limiting their assertion of territorial control. 

In recent weeks, Sunni leaders have been increasingly vocal about demanding their autonomy.

Last week, Sunni Speaker of the Parliament Osama Al-Nujaifi traveled to Washington to discuss Sunni grievances with US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. 

Prominent Sunni MP Saleem Al-Juburi said Al-Nujaifi had discussed with Obama and Biden the possibility of declaring the Sunni-populated provinces as federal regions within Iraq.

“This is the [only] solution if other solutions fail,” he told Iraqi Al-Summeria television.

In 2006, Biden, who was a leading US senator at the time, proposed the so-called “soft partition” plan to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions held together by a central government.

But the plan was seen by many Iraqis as paving the way for breaking up the Iraqi state into three separate entities for Kurds, Shias and Sunnis.  

A Kurdish news outlet close to the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party reported this week that the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq would declare its independence within five years.

Rudaw quoted energy advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government Ali Balu as saying that Kurdistan “is going to be rid of its status as a region within Iraq.”

“A plan is underway for Kurdistan to be an independent state in the near future,” he said. According to Balu, Kurdistan’s independence would be driven by the region’s geostrategic position and its rich energy reserves.

He said that Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani’s participation in the World Economic Forum at Davos last week had been to pave the way for international recognition of Kurdistan as an independent state.

Barzani has repeatedly warned that the Kurds will seek independence if the region’s disputes with Baghdad over oil, the region’s budget and its territory remain unresolved.

More broadly, the widely expected moment of Iraq’s split may now be finally approaching. It has long been assumed that the failure of Al-Maliki’s coalition government would push Iraq into “soft partitioning” as the only means of avoiding a fully-fledged civil war and the growing threat of a regional flare-up.

Given the increased violence and political uncertainty in Iraq today, the new plans, which would initiate substantive changes in Iraq’s ethno-political map in addition to Kurdistan’s alleged preparations for early independence, raise the question of whether Iraq will remain united in 2020.

In a country where fundamental issues remain unresolved, including the future shape of its provincial boundaries and power-sharing, things are likely to continue teetering on the brink.

With communal divisions sharpening and violence going unabated, the Iraqis’ faith in a unitary state is fading and many of them may now be surrendering to what they see as inevitable.

The United States does not have a solution to the Iraqi crisis and it should stay out of the country, writes Salah Nasrawi

Nearly four months after its general elections, Iraq’s self-ruled Kurdistan region is still without a functioning government due to political differences and bargaining over allocations of posts in the new parliament and cabinet.

Leaders of the prospective coalition parties have been struggling for weeks to finalise an agreement on sharing the seats in the new government and its programme. The failure to form a coalition government will accentuate fears of polarisation in Kurdistan, which is already gripped in budget and oil disputes with the central government in Baghdad.

The impasse has raised questions about Kurdistan’s democracy and whether its leaders, once viewed as liberators and reflective of Kurdish nationalism, are now straying into autocrats at the top of a corrupt bureaucracy in their emerging national state.

The Kurdistan region held its fourth legislative elections on 21 September, and final results were announced two weeks later. The new assembly convened briefly on 6 November to allow members to be sworn in, but it was then suspended indefinitely.

However, there is growing unease that prolonged coalition bickering and tactical posturing will not pay off in Kurdistan’s instability-prone politics. The risk of a power struggle has already prompted neighbouring Iran to offer its mediation to end the stalemate.

Some 88 MPs have demanded that the parliament reconvene immediately to resume its business and elect a speaker. They have warned that the suspension of the assembly for too long “will create a legal vacuum” and make people “lose confidence” in the parliament.

The elections in September resulted in a hung parliament in which no party garnered enough votes to form a majority government. Kurdistan’s parliament is composed of a total of 111 seats, out of which 11 were reserved for minorities such as Christians, Tourkoumans and Yazidis.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the region’s most powerful party led by Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani, secured 38 seats, far shy of the 56 seats needed to form the government.

Its main partner, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), won only 18 seats. The main opposition party, Gorran, or Change, which run on a reform ticket, won 24 seats, and the rest of the seats went to smaller parties which are also cashing in on voter dismay.

The result has thrown into disarray the bi-party system which had dominated Kurdistan’s politics for nearly two decades and made a coalition government with Gorran’s participation inevitable. Gorran was established in 2009 after its leaders split from the PUK seeking to promote a reform agenda in the region.

The Kurds have enjoyed semi autonomy since 1991, when a US-British no-fly zone helped protect them from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s forces until his fall in the 2003 US-led invasion. Since then, the region has been enjoying self-rule as a federal region of Iraq.

From its emergence in 1991, the Kurdish Autonomous Region has been ruled by the alliance of the KDP and PUK. The two resistance groups which led the Kurdish armed struggle against the Iraqi governments promised a democratic Kurdistan, but as they held to power they pushed through measures that gave them sweeping powers and established an autocratic regime that belies the image of a true democracy.

Now the outcome of the elections has brought to the limelight public disillusionment over the two parties’ consolidation of power, their commitment to corruption and cronyism and their unbridled security forces.

Barzani had already asked his nephew and son-in-law Nechirvan Barzani, who is also his deputy as party chief, to form the government. The move was considered as highly unusual before parliament convenes, but it was seemingly aimed at undercutting any bid by the other parties to vie for the post.

Because the KDP can neither form the government alone nor with its partner the PUK, it offered to form a broad coalition government, accepting the prospect of making Gorran and other opposition parties junior partners

Initially, the KDP made it clear that it would grant the first choice of partnership in the next government to its strategic ally and coalition partner the PUK, which had lost most votes to Gorran.

The KDP also rejected preconditions by the main opposition parties, which had demanded portfolios in the new government distributed according to the popular vote.

But negotiations to form the new government have stalled, as have efforts by Gorran to challenge the hegemony of the two ruling parties.

Kurdish press reports suggest that demands by the PUK to keep the post of the speaker of the parliament and several key cabinet portfolios are the main obstacles behind the delays in forming the new government. 

The demands have been met by strong opposition by Gorran, which considers them to be attempts by the PUK, whose followers control the security forces and occupy prominent slots in the public services in many parts of Kurdistan, to retain its position of dominance despite its heavy losses in the elections.

As the coalition talks enter their fifth month next week, the KDP, which fears a backlash if the government deadlock continues, appears to be willing to abandon its “most favoured” treatment to its old strategic ally.

In recent days, several KDP officials have gone public in blaming the PUK for the delay in forming the government and issued warnings that their party’s patience may be running out.

The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday that Iran had asked the KDP and PUK to send high-level delegations to Tehran for talks on the government crisis.

The paper quoted an unidentified Kurdish official as saying that Iran “doesn’t want to see the political status of its strategic ally the PUK weakened”.  

Eventually, political deals may be done to form a new government, but the question raised by many Kurds is whether this will be able to get down to business and what it can afford for the Kurds.

During the election campaign, there were a number of themes that came through as priorities for Iraqi Kurdistan’s future, on top of them reform of the political system in the region including drafting a constitution to make it more democratic.

The next government is expected to address this issue, which was also among the main campaign promises by Gorran. Party leaders realise that compromising their ideals in exchange for a few cabinet jobs will cost them many of their supporters.

Since its inception following an uprising against Saddam’s government, the self-ruled Kurdish region has had no constitution, and a draft constitution which was passed by the regional parliament in 2009 was never put to a referendum.

The pro-reform parties have insisted on reworking this constitution and have argued that the draft charter was rushed through by the parliament which was then under the control of the two ruling parties.

They even claim that some articles were changed, including those which made the Iraqi Kurdistan region into a presidential system, whereas the original document states that the region enjoys “a parliamentary political system”.

Another dispute is over Barzani’s presidency. In July, lawmakers from the two ruling parties in the region voted unanimously to extend Barzani’s term exceptionally for two more years, despite a limit imposed by the draft constitution on his presidency.

The opposition parties denounced the vote as a coup targeting the parliament and the process of democratisation in the region. The Kurdistan region’s draft constitution states that the president of the Kurdistan region “may be re-elected for a second term as of the date this constitution enters into force”.

Other main opposition demands include unifying the region’s army of the Peshmergas and security forces, institutionalising the government, ensuring the independence of the judiciary, and creating a parliamentary political system.

A key challenge that the new government will face is mounting demands to address corruption and cronyism in the region. For the last 10 years, the administration has been refusing to meet any of these demands, allowing internal discontent to fester.

In addition, the next government should tackle the problem of the Barzani family’s domination of business and oil revenues, which allows the KDP to fund a wide network of services and patronage, putting other parties at a disadvantage.

Simultaneously, most Kurds want the new government to end the heavy-handedness of the security forces which are said to pull strings behind the scenes and who have been accused of repression and corruption.

Last month, Kurdish journalist Kawa Germyani was murdered outside his home. It’s believed he was targeted because of his investigations into corrupt security officials. His family have filed a law suit against PUK officials, including a politburo member whom they believe ordered his execution.

However, the big challenge remains if Kurdistan, celebrated by various international actors as a haven of peace and democracy in crisis-plagued and violence- battered Iraq, has any chance of producing significant political change.

More specifically, can Iraqi Kurdish democracy exist and advance under its current system when one hegemonic party is clinging to power and doing everything it can to abuse its power and stack the odds in its favour?