I first encountered the term “the Lebanonization of Iraq” in the headline of a Reuters story published shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when the American occupation authorities were considering the adoption of an ethno-sectarian quota system resembling the political system that has been in place in Lebanon since the early twentieth century. The problems inherent in this decision were as clear to us Lebanese then, and they are even more clear today.
That decision alone was not responsible for dragging Iraq into sectarian civil war, nor for the rise of ISIS, but it poured fuel onto the sectarian flames that tore the country apart and opened the door to Iran’s penetration of Iraq’s political and security institutions.
Today, the Iraqi government finds itself unable to control the Iran-aligned Shiite militias that have launched numerous attacks against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in defense of the regime in Tehran since the war began at the end of February, including a serious drone attack on a nuclear facility in the UAE earlier this month. This paralysis may not yet have become as grave as the Lebanese state’s failure to control “Hezbollah” yet, nor has it had the same catastrophic humanitarian, economic, and political implications, but it remains a driving force of Iraq’s instability and threat to Gulf security more broadly.
The quota system (which stipulated that the premiership be reserved for Shiites, the speakership of parliament for Sunni Arabs, and the presidency for the Kurds) facilitated Iran’s infiltration of the Iraqi political landscape and its hold over successive governments and prime ministers, not to mention its military expansion through support for militias, some of which have effectively become integrated into the country’s security apparatus.
With each of those militias’ attack against the Gulf states or Jordan, Iraqi officials issue statements condemning them, as though those statements were coming from another planet, reminding us of Lebanon’s reiterations that armament must be restricted to the hands of the statem and that Gulf security is an inseparable part of Iraq’s security. The point, here, is not to question the sincerity of those statements, but to highlight the weakness of central authority in both countries.
Lebanon’s crisis, of course, runs far deeper because of Israel and its ongoing attacks on the one hand, and because, on the other, Hezbollah has all but abandoned what remained of the Lebanese national identity that once formed the backbone of its cross-sectarian popularity, at least after its success in liberating the south in 2000. The party’s militia dragged Lebanon into the Gaza support war in 2023 and then into Iran’s war without consulting the Lebanese people. Its leaders then rejected the state’s decision to negotiate through Washington to end the war and occupation, under the pretext of lacking internal consensus. Israel’s assault continues to reinforce the party’s legitimacy, so much so that one sometimes feels there is a wager on Israel escalating its criminality in the hope of sustaining the armed militia that can no longer truly protect Lebanon as it once claimed.
Unlike Lebanon, Israel does not pose an existential threat to Iraq, nor does it bomb Iraqi villages or violate Iraqi territory on a daily basis in ways that could legitimize the continued existence of armed factions loyal to any entity other than the state.
But none of this means Iraq’s predicament is minor, especially amid the American administration’s apparent desire to isolate Iran’s regional proxies from the main negotiations with Tehran, which could incentivize the Iranian regime to sabotage those diplomatic tracks.
Although sources cited by Asharq Al-Awsat in a report published this week spoke of five factions that are not opposed to disarmament and handing their arms to the authorities, the same report pointed to the difficulty of implementing this after those factions expanded at the expense of the state and its institutions, not to mention Iran’s opposition, for years.
The sectarian system has always been, and will remain, a principal reason for Lebanon’s inability to consolidate central authority and combat corruption and patronage. The same dynamic can be seen in Iraq, which is likewise drowning in entrenched corruption scandals and suffering from a crushing failure to implement economic reforms that would reduce the state’s dependence on oil revenues.
The result, even if it does not yet rival the scale of Lebanon’s catastrophe, is no less grim: threats to the security of neighboring states and American interests. The problem is significant enough to Washington to feel compelled to halt monthly dollar shipments to Baghdad in an attempt to pressure the government. Yet, as we see in Lebanon, it is exceedingly difficult to confront militias purely through security measures without risking civil war.
So what is the solution? The irony in Asharq Al-Awsat’s report is that one expert believes the Shiite religious authority in Najaf could deprive the factions that refuse to surrender their weapons of justification on religious grounds, a “solution” that in itself reveals the depth of Iraq’s dysfunction today.
Incidentally, among the factions refusing to disarm is one called the Hezbollah Brigades. This is not a joke. We are not laughing.
