Shafaq News
Iraq'sgovernment has published merit-based criteria for appointing officials to thesenior state positions known as special grades, the layer of sub-cabinet poststhat political parties have carved among themselves since 2003. Theannouncement, days after security forces detained dozens of officials in asweep known as the Dawn Crackdown in Baghdad and other provinces, tests whetherPrime Minister Ali al-Zaidi can pull state appointments loose from the quotasystem that installed his own government.
Special grades(al-darajat al-khassa in Arabic) sit below ministerial rank but run the workingstate: directors-general, deputy ministers, heads of independent commissions,ambassadors, and senior advisers. Whoever holds them controls budgets,contracts, hiring, and the daily operation of ministries. For more than twodecades they have been distributed through the muhasasa system, the post-2003arrangement that apportions government office among Iraq's sectarian and partyblocs rather than on professional grounds. Estimates of their number areunofficial and vary widely; figures obtained by Shafaq News revealed that thenumber runs above 6,000, other counts are lower, and no government tally hasbeen published.
The FederalPublic Service Council, the body charged with overseeing state employment, nowsays appointments should turn on qualification rather than allegiance. Itsspokesperson, Fadhl al-Gharawi, told Shafaq News the government is committed toselecting special-grade officials "according to professional and nationalcriteria, away from political quota-sharing." He set out standards thatweigh professional competence, integrity, administrative experience, independence,and a readiness to place the public interest above political or personalcalculation.
Whether thatlanguage binds anyone is the real matter at hand.
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The patternal-Gharawi describes reforming is older than any single government. Muhannadal-Rawi, a political affairs researcher, traces it to the Governing Councilassembled after the 2003 US-led invasion, which seated Iraq's factions by sectrather than by competence. "Control over the mechanisms for selectingstate employees and sensitive posts was not born with this government," hetold Shafaq News; the constitution and the settlements that followed, heargues, hardened the formula into something close to permanent. More thantwenty years on, its features remain intact.
Thatinheritance is visible inside al-Zaidi's own cabinet. Parliament confirmed himin May with only a partial lineup, unable to agree on portfolios that includedthe interior and defense ministries —the same bargaining over spoils the newappointment criteria are meant to displace. Al-Zaidi himself reached office asa compromise: a businessman with no party base, chosen by the CoordinationFramework, the alliance of mainly Iran-aligned Shia parties that dominatesparliament, after Washington's opposition sank the candidacy of former premierNouri al-Maliki.
What gives thereform announcement more weight than earlier iterations is the enforcementaction behind it. On June 28, al-Zaidi ordered special forces into the GreenZone, the government quarter in central Baghdad, in an operation local mediacalled Sawlat al-Fajr, or the Dawn Crackdown. At least 67 serving and formerofficials were detained on corruption grounds. The most prominent, deputy oilminister Ali Maarij, had been sanctioned by the United States in May overaccusations that he diverted Iraqi oil to Iran-aligned networks.
The raiddisturbed the informal understandings that shield senior officeholders, andanalysts read it as more than a single episode. Sami Salam, also a politicalaffairs researcher, argues the campaign shifted the terms of Iraqi politics. The arrests, he told Shafaq News, "disrupted the influence networks tiedto the top posts" and marked "the beginning of resetting therelationship between the state and the parties." He points to somethingwithout precedent since 2003: ministries where appointments remain frozenbecause the blocs cannot agree on candidates, a paralysis he reads as evidencethat the old distribution no longer runs smoothly. In his account, thespecial-grades standards and the corruption sweep are “two halves of a singleeffort to reclaim appointments from the parties.”
Al-Rawi is lesspersuaded that intent will translate into control. Al-Zaidi faces continuouspolitical pressure even as he works to narrow the parties' reach, he says, andreform will hold only if administrative decisions can be severed from thebargaining that sustains the blocs. “The moment carries unusual potential, asthe prime minister has international backing, and a public increasinglyimpatient with corruption, but staying the present course without structuralchange would leave the state circling the same institutional failure it hasnever escaped.”
Al-Maarij caseis where Iraq's domestic contest meets a wider one. His US designation foldsthe appointments fight into the sustained American pressure campaign againstIran's economic reach in Iraq, a campaign that intruded directly on thisgovernment's formation through Washington's veto of al-Maliki and itssubsequent squeeze on cash transfers and security cooperation. A merit standardapplied to senior posts is also, in effect, a standard that sanctioned ormilitia-linked figures would find harder to meet, which is why the reform readsdifferently in Washington than in a purely administrative frame.
Precedentargues for caution. Iraq has moved through anti-corruption drives andappointment reforms before, and the blocs have generally absorbed them, waitingout the enforcement and restoring their people once attention moved on. Thecriteria announced now carry no published enforcement mechanism and no timelinefor converting the thousands of posts held "by proxy", filled in anacting capacity, without formal confirmation, into permanent, vettedappointments. The real test, analysts note, will arrive with the firstcontested ministry, when a qualified outsider and a bloc's preferred candidatereach for the same chair.
For now thestandards exist, and the raids have unsettled the networks that appointmentshave always served. Whether the criteria bind the same parties that wrote them,and that placed al-Zaidi where he sits, will be revealed post by post, in whoends up holding Iraq's senior offices when the next round of appointments ismade.
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Written andedited by Shafaq News staff.