Perpetual Protest and the Failure of the post-2003 Iraqi State - MERIP
From the conclusion of this fine piece by Fanar Haddad:
The prospect of perpetual protest, both elite-driven and popular, alongside persistent state failure is a damning indictment of the post-2003 state-building enterprise. It recalls former Finance Minister Ali Allawi’s summation of the Iraqi state in his lengthy resignation letter of 2022. He describes a state that exists in form but not in substance, one that is capable of recreating itself despite its numerous contradictions. It is these contradictions, underpinning the hybridity, the opacity and the dysfunction of the system, that paradoxically lend it resilience:
All the calls for reform are stymied by the political framework of this country… It has allowed for the state’s capture by outside interest groups. Unlike human beings, states do not die in a definitive way. They could linger on as zombie states . . . the machinery of government continues, it is true, and the trappings of state power persist, but there is no substance to the form.