Iraq’s troubled politics: Uneasy lies the head
At any time, Haider al-Abadi would have made an unusual Middle Eastern leader. But his appointment in August 2014 as prime minister and head of the armed forces just two months after Mosul, Iraq’s second city, had fallen to the fearsome new armies of Islamic State (IS) seemed especially perverse. He had held no previous military […]At any time, Haider al-Abadi would have made an unusual Middle Eastern leader. But his appointment in August 2014 as prime minister and head of the armed forces just two months after Mosul, Iraq’s second city, had fallen to the fearsome new armies of Islamic State (IS) seemed especially perverse. He had held no previous military post, and in his youth had dodged the draft. As a British exile, he fixed lifts for the BBC. But while Iraqis seemed content to leave the battle against IS to others, particularly the Iranian-backed Shia militias, they looked to him to right Iraq’s woefully corrupt state, which is divvied up between sectarian and Kurdish political blocs.
