Iraq is a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. It is a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, the President of Iraq as the head of state, and legislative power is vested in the Council of Representatives.
Ibrahim Abdul Karim al-Eshaiker, better known as Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is an Iraqi politician who was Prime Minister of Iraq in the Iraqi Transitional Government from 2005 to 2006, following the January 2005 election. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2018.
Barham Salih is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the eighth president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022.
The first government of Iraq led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took office on May 20, 2006 following approval by the members of the Iraqi National Assembly. This followed the general election in December 2005. The government succeeded the Iraqi Transitional Government which had continued in office in a caretaker capacity until the new government was formed and confirmed.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi al-Muntafiki is an Iraqi politician who served as Prime Minister of Iraq from October 2018 until May 2020. Abdul-Mahdi is an economist and was one of the vice presidents of Iraq from 2005 to 2011. He formerly served as Minister of Finance in the Interim government and Oil Minister from 2014 to 2016.
Iraq has had three vice presidents or deputy presidents serving concurrently.
This article concerns the formation process of the Al Maliki I Government of Iraq in the aftermath of the Iraq National Assembly being elected on December 15, 2005. Due to disputes over alleged vote-rigging the results of the election were only certified by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq on February 10, 2006.
Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani is an Iraqi politician who has been the Prime Minister of Iraq since 27 October 2022. Prior to his premiership, he held a number of ministerial positions; namely, Minister of Industry and Minerals, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, acting Minister of Trade, acting Minister of Finance, acting Minister of Migration and Displacement, acting Minister of Agriculture, and Minister of Human Rights. He was Governor of Maysan in 2009-2010.
Corruption is pervasive at all levels of government in Iraq. In 2021, President Barham Salih stated that US$150 billion of oil money had been stolen and smuggled out of Iraq in corrupt deals since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Endemic corruption pervades Iraq's oil and gas sectors, which still accounts for more than 99 percent of the country’s exports and 85 percent of the government’s budget. The Iraqi economy is predominantly a cash economy, making it almost impossible to trace the amount or the path the money follows.
Muhammad Fuad Masum is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the seventh president of Iraq from 24 July 2014 to 2 October 2018. He was elected as president following the 2014 parliamentary election. Masum is the second non-Arab president of Iraq, succeeding Jalal Talabani, also Kurdish, and was a confidant of Talabani.
The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 ended the period of occupation that had begun with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The time since U.S. withdrawal has been marked by a renewed Iraqi insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by ISIL and various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces during the early phase of the conflict. The war ended in 2017 with an Iraqi government and allied victory, however ISIL continues a low-intensity insurgency in remote parts of the country.
Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi or Saedi is an Iraqi military officer with the rank General, who played a critical role in defeating ISIS during the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and who served as the head of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (ICTS) from 2020 to 2023. He received the French Legion of Honour in 2022.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 12 May 2018. The elections decided the 329 members of the Council of Representatives, the country's unicameral legislature, who in turn will elect the Iraqi president and prime minister. The Iraqi parliament ordered a manual recount of the results on 6 June 2018. On 10 June 2018, a storage site in Baghdad housing roughly half of the ballots from the May parliamentary election caught fire.
Fuad Mohammed Hussein is an Iraqi Kurdish politician from the Kurdistan Democratic Party who is the current Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was previously the Minister of Finance in the Government of Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
A series of demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and civil disobedience took place in Iraq from 2019 until 2021. It started on 1 October 2019, a date which was set by civil activists on social media, spreading mainly over the central and southern provinces of Iraq, to protest corruption, high unemployment, political sectarianism, inefficient public services and foreign interventionism. Protests spread quickly, coordinated over social media, to other provinces in Iraq. As the intensity of the demonstrations peaked in late October, protesters' anger focused not only on the desire for a complete overhaul of the Iraqi government but also on driving out Iranian influence, including Iranian-aligned Shia militias. The government, with the help of Iranian-backed militias responded brutally using live bullets, marksmen, hot water, hot pepper gas and tear gas against protesters, leading to many deaths and injuries.
Mustafa Abdul Latif Mishatat, known as Mustafa al-Kadhimi, alternatively spelt Mustafa al-Kadhimy, is an Iraqi politician, lawyer, bureaucrat and former intelligence officer who served as the Prime Minister of Iraq from May 2020 to October 2022. He previously served as columnist for several news outlets and the Director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, originally appointed in June 2016. He briefly served as Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs in an acting capacity in 2020. The latter part of his tenure closely followed the 2022 Iraqi political crisis.
On 7 November 2021, the Iraqi Armed Forces reported that Prime Minister of Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi survived an assassination attempt that morning. An explosive-laden drone attacked his Baghdad residence while two were shot down. Several members of his security personnel were injured. No one has claimed responsibility, although the general consensus is that it was perpetrated by pro-Iran militias. The assassination attempt was probably connected to the pro-Iran militia supporters who caused the Baghdad clashes two days before.
The Al-Kadhimi Government was the government of the Republic of Iraq from 2020 to 2022, led by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a former director of the National Intelligence Service. It was formed on 7 May 2020 after extensive negotiations. While Al-Kadhimi himself and most cabinet ministers where sworn in on that date, seven ministers were not confirmed by the Council of Representatives until 6 June 2020.
On January 21, 2022, several Islamic State gunmen raided an Iraqi Army base in rural al-Azim district, Diyala Governorate. At least 11 Iraqi soldiers were killed in their sleep.
Between the parliamentary election in October 2021 and October 2022, there was a political crisis in Iraq, with members of the Council of Representatives of Iraq being unable to form a stable coalition government, or elect a new President. Basic government services such as the civil service and military continued functioning, but the national political system was in deadlock including in respect of almost all major spending and taxation issues. On 27 October 2022, the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani was approved by the Council of Representatives.
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