During Peaceful protesting in Baghdad´s governmental district for employment opportunities, medical students were met by a brutal crackdown through the Iraqi security forces, reminding many of the early days of the Tishreen-protest movement in 2019 which had left hundreds dead and thousands injured. The continuation of protest 5 years later, reveals the unceased structural crisis of the political system in post-2003 Iraq.
During large protests on the 20th of August 2024 in front of the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, hundreds of university graduates from the medical field demanded the implementation of “Iraqi Medical Progression Law of 2000” which regulates and guarantees permanent state employment of all graduates from the medical and health professions.
Around five thousand recent graduates from various Iraqi governorates participated and clashed with the Iraqi security forces which were trying to break up the protest. Serious injuries among the protesters have been reported.
The Iraqi Ministry of Finance and Health, after having hired 60,000 graduates annually in recent years, is refusing to employ this number of graduates from the medical field due to an alleged surplus of staff in the hospitals.
However, the two ministries issued a decree to appoint only 29,000 graduates out of 60,000 recent graduates, which made the public wonder about the mechanism for appointing these people in state medical institutions. The demonstrators also point to a different issue in this hiring system, namely corruption: They accuse the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance of not operating according to the official central hiring mechanism for state employments, but rather according to corrupt mechanisms based on the sectarian clientelist system in Iraq. Hereby, the ruling parties distribute resources, ministries and jobs between themselves, and in turn distribute these jobs according to favoritism and sectarian loyalty to people rather than starting a fair process based on people´s qualifications for the jobs.
Unrevealing an accumulated structural crisis
Meanwhile, the head of the parliamentary health and environment committee, Majid Shankali1 , stated in a television interview that, his committee submitted a proposal to amend the fourth law of medical progression No. 6 of 2000, proposing for students starting to study in 2024/2025 to be hired only depending on the need of the respective health institutions.
Shankali added that “these problems [meaning protests] have arisen now as a result of the Cabinet decision”. We were surprised by the Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani`s decision to allow for only 29,000 job positions this year in the Ministry of Health, while the number of applicants from graduates of medical colleges and institutes is about 61,000”.
But rather than being just a question of public employment and demand for staff in the medical field, the current discussion points to a broader, structural issue. As it is the case in other sectors , the state has neglected almost all economic and state service sectors apart from the oil sector. This is exemplified by the little spending in and general neglect of this sector. In 2019 for example, while the security forces received 18% and the oil ministry 13.5%, the health sector was awarded only 2.5% of the 106.5 billion state budget. Indeed, a report by the news agency Reuters confirms a shortage rather than surplus labor: “Iraq’s health-care system is in crisis. […]
“There are shortages of medicines and the medical staff to administer them. Doctors are fleeing in their thousands, and life expectancy and child mortality rates are far below average for the region.”2 This trend is a continuation of a decade long policy as the report confirms:
”Over the past decade, World Health Organization data shows, Iraq’s central government has consistently spent far less per capita on health care than its poorer neighbors—$161 per person per year on average, compared with $304 in Jordan and $649 in Lebanon.”
The political economy of medical graduate´s unemployment
Due to the large numbers of students admitted in the medical field to universities each year, there are enough university graduates to cover the need within the health system, however the state lacks the adequate political and economic infrastructure to employ its own citizens. On the one hand, the increasing number of university graduates in the health sector is directly connected to the neglect of the public sector which is connected to the growth in the numbers of private universities offering study opportunities in the health and medical sector. The growth of the private university system is also an expression of the growing class gap in Iraq: While previously the access to study in the field was heavily regulated by the centrally set numerus clauses through the state, the private sector provides now the opportunity for everyone to study in the field of their wish – if they can afford to pay for it. The number of private universities has grown from previously 10 in 2003 to 75 private universities in 2022. But also this phenomenon must be read within the political economy of the post-2003 system. While it is true that there is less spending into the public education sector, the private universities are often owned by politicians and parties.
Hence there is a direct connection in the neglect of the public education sector due to the economic interests by the ruling class. However, as the quality of education within private colleges is not always regulated, many students graduate with a poor academic skills that leaves them ill-prepared for the job market and in turn affects the quality of the country’s health system in general.
The state lacks functioning medical infrastructures such as hospitals and clinics to absorb the newly graduated into the labor market. The Iraqi economy still depends heavily on the oil sector, while the industrial and agricultural sectors suffer from significant decline.
This further complicates the situation, as thousands of students graduate annually to find themselves in a limited labor market that does not provide them with job opportunities according to their qualifications. The continuation of this crisis without solutions may lead to more protests and demonstrations, exacerbating the problem of unemployment among young people, increasing emigration rates, and weakening people’s confidence in the educational and governmental systems.
The crisis is structurally embedded in the sectarian system
Unemployment in Iraq has grown sharply with the establishment of the sectarian system in Iraq by US forces since the invasion of 2003. It was during this time that sectarianism became officially institutionalized in the Iraqi political system. Together with the large oil income, a system had been created wherein sectarian groups and parties are fighting over the oil revenues to strengthen their own personal and partisan interests instead of improving the living conditions of the population. At the same time, throughout the last two decades, the same parties have manifested their control of the states’ resources and developed deep roots within the state which gives them immunity and little accountability to the public and the power to decide whom to employ. This is to the detriment of improving services and improving the living conditions of the population.
The politics of the Current Prime Minister : bridges and militia government
The demonstration of health graduates includes a warning to the current government, which is led mainly by the same sectarian Shiite forces that had previously been the target of the October 2019 uprising–the largest popular uprising the current regime has faced since the US occupation in 2003. The demands of the 2019 uprising remained unanswered: neither has the crisis of unemployment been solves, nor, the spread of corruption and sectarianism in state agencies, the deterioration of public services, or the dramatic rise of poverty.
However, the current government, which was formed primarily by the Coordination Framework (Etar Tansiqi), that includes the most prominent Shiite armed parties and factions, is trying to present itself as different from its predecessors in the field of fighting corruption. This strategy seems to be working among parts of the population.
The prime minister presents himself as someone who is developing and modernising the country, and claims to invest into the infrastructure of Baghdad. He became well known for his infrastructural developments including building four new bridges in Baghdad and three bridges that had been under construction for years: Al-Krayat area bridge, Bab Al-Shargi Bridge, Fine Arts university Bridge and Abu Nawas Bridge. He also restored and paved many roads in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
At the same time, he advertises the building and reparations of Iraqi bridges well within Iraqi media, and posters that name him personally for the construction and depict him as someone who serves his city and the people rather than sectarian politics. This leads to some acceptance among the public acknowledging the prime minister as a practical man who is finally “doing” something.
There is no doubt that some people feel hopeful when they see these projects come to fruition. After years of despair, frustration and neglect, some people are thinking of giving the prime minister a chance to stay in power, hoping that he will implement reforms to improve the living conditions of the people. But for others, building bridges only will not replace poverty and decent living, as the protests will continue as long as the current unemployment problem continues4. Especially since unemployment rates indicate that the government has not made any progress on the most pressing issue, the social issue.5
The government of the prime minister, despite announcing successive campaigns against corruption is and remains itself a product of the same system of corruption and sectarianism in Iraq as the government’s engagement with the protests of the university graduates shows. Those that are not “pacified” with bridges, are suppressed by the repressive state apparatus. There is nothing else to expect, as this government has been elected by the Coordination Framework – which is an umbrella bloc of Iraqi Shiite parties having their own inner and extra-state militias (namely Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah). Hence, this government is the political representation of a pro-Iran militia within the state that is the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. Therefore, despite any attempts to claim differently, this government has relied and remains forced to coexist with militias that uphold a system of institutionalized corruption and sectarianism.
A caricature showing the great similarity between ISIS and political Islamic militias in Iraq.
The picture shows us when ISIS forces were marking homes of Iraqi Christian people with the letter N which means "Christian" in Arabic, as well as the militias in the city of Najaf, in southern Iraq, pursuing and killing activists who are different politically and ideologically with them.
Army soldiers try to prevent anti-government protesters from crossing the al- Shuhada (Martyrs) bridge in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Nominating a new parliament speaker without any immediate solutions since last year, 2023.
