Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – In the latest episode of Battlegrounds, Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s prime minister from 2014 to 2018, told Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow H. R. McMaster that the key to peace and prosperity in Mesopotamia and the Greater Middle East is to put aside vendettas that have fueled the Shiite-Sunni divide and to forge common interests that raise the stakes of falling into cycles of sectarian violence.
Al-Abadi, a Shiite and former member of the Dawa Party, fled Iraq after he and his family were threatened by the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein and lived in exile in the United Kingdom for two decades. Two of his brothers were executed by the Ba'athist regime and another was imprisoned for a decade.
In 2003, al-Abadi returned to Iraq after the US-led invasion and the removal of Hussein from his seat of power in Baghdad. In September of that year, al-Abadi was appointed as Iraq’s minister of communications. He subsequently served as advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then as deputy leader of the Dawa Party prior to his election as prime minister in 2014.
Al-Abadi told McMaster that although the loss of his brothers caused immeasurable suffering to his family, the only way for the country to become secure and prosperous is to resist impulses for revenge.
“Revenge will never help us. Vendetta will never help us,” said al-Abadi. “But we have to be careful that what happened before is never going to be repeated. We shouldn’t allow dictators and oppressors to govern the country anymore.”
Toward this ideal, Iraq has suffered numerous growing pains. The de-Ba'athification of the government and army ignited a Sunni insurgency against the US-led occupation and the Shiite majority government. Sectarian tensions reached a crescendo in February 2006 when terrorists bombed the al-Askari (Golden) Mosque in Samarra, severely damaging one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Sunnis and Shiites fell into a civil war that resulted in more than a thousand killings in the days following the attacks.
After a surge of US troops and civilian personnel starting 2007 that helped stabilized Iraq over a four-year period, America’s withdrawal in 2011 opened a security void that enabled Islamic State forces to take large swaths of territory in their attempt to establish a caliphate in the Middle East.
Al-Abadi said that when he became prime minister, the Iraqi Army had virtually collapsed, and the Islamic State was dominating the geopolitical landscape. Moreover, he explained that many Sunnis felt marginalized by the Shiite political majority and thus lent tacit support to extremist elements within Iraqi society that sought to weaken the national government. Al-Abadi also said that many young Sunni men had been attracted to movements such as the Islamic State because they believed that they would be sacrificing their lives for a noble cause.
“People have both sides in them. Nobody is absolute evil, and nobody is an absolute angel,” said al-Abadi. “So, it’s not up to us to judge people. We can judge the acts of people.”
Al-Abadi said that a key priority of his administration was to liberate the country from the Islamic State and bring the marginalized into the mainstream of society, restore their trust in the government, and recruit them into the ranks of the army. However, as he told McMaster, this was not an easy task.
“You should not lose track. You should be consistent. It’s not a matter of doing it once, twice, or three times, and saying, ‘Well I give up.’ You have to be very consistent for people to believe you,” said al-Abadi about persuading large segments of Sunni society to support his government’s efforts.
Al-Abadi explained that it was difficult to sustain these policies and achieve a second term in office because of a steep drop in the price of oil, a key source of revenue for the Iraqi government. He said that although the Iraqi Army was strengthened during his government, the nation’s political fissures continued to deepen. He described how in 2018, two rival factions—Saairun, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the pro-Iran Fatah Alliance—gained a majority of seats in Iraq’s Council of Representatives. This was an unfortunate development, he asserted, because it essentially meant that two armed militia groups had taken power of the state, seeking to use governing institutions for their respective parties’ benefit instead of the interests of the nation.
“When you are in a position of responsibility, you have to care about all of the people, whether they support you or not,” al-Abadi stressed.
However, al-Abadi remains supportive of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s efforts to strengthen relationships with other nations in the Middle East, in which they can focus on expanding economic opportunities and increasing their respective citizens’ access to water, energy, and other vital resources. He concluded that a secure and prosperous future for the region is possible, as long as its people can move on from the enmity caused by history of brutal conflicts.
“Don’t forget this region lives in history,” al-Abadi concluded, adding, “But let us put greater emphasis on things that are of common interest to us.”
