MESOPOTAMIA TOP OF THE AGENDA IRAQ / KURDISTAN

December 27, 2019
President Barham Salih said he would resign (AP) rather than approve an Iran-backed candidate for prime minister who has been rejected by protesters in monthslong anti-government demonstrations.

Iraq’s protest movement, which led to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi earlier this month, calls for new political leaders (AFP) without ties to the current establishment. Following the nomination by the parliamentary bloc of mostly Iran-backed lawmakers, a rival bloc said it would not put forth (FT) its own candidate. More than 450 people have been killed and around twenty thousand others injured in unrest related to the protests, and government offices and schools are closed across much of the country’s south.
Analysis
“Mr Salih’s departure would be a blow to the US, whose influence in Iraq is already diminishing, as he has strong ties to Washington,” Chloe Cornish writes for the Financial Times.

“In its inscrutability, its lack of clear political affiliation, and its uncompromising demands, the uprising represents a broad denunciation of the post-Saddam political order,” Renad Mansour writes for Foreign Affairs.

In this CFR In Brief, Max Boot lays out what to know about Iraq’s deadly protests.