Major Economic & Social Issues

If the current turmoil in the Iraqi capital Baghdad contains any message, it is that the majority of Iraqis are quite fed up with the status quo. Their grievance isn’t limited to any one aspect of the nation’s life, being the difficulties of day-to-day survival or the fact that government has passed into the hands of a confederacy of kleptocrats who have transformed corruptio

Over the past month, Iraq has been beset by protests as hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets to express their discontent with the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt political process. The unrest culminated in the storming and occupation of the Iraqi parliament at the end of April by the followers of the radical anti-West cleric Muqtada al-Sadr after he

Iraq Council of Representatives Graphic Iraq's "rump" Council of Representatives (CoR) formed on April 14, 2016 when some members of Parliament staged a sit in after months of stalled reforms. The rump CoR, at its zenith, was supported by multiple prominent political parties, including the Sadrist al-Ahrar Bloc and the Badr Organization. These parties largely walked out of the

EVEN before America sealed it off with blast walls and razor wire, the area now known as the Green Zone in central Baghdad was viewed with a mixture of fear and loathing. Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s brutal late dictator, adorned his palaces with monuments to himself. After toppling him, the American-led coalition moved into one of these—the Republican Palace—and the Green Zone devel