Yearbook 2010
Iraq. After an over nine-month power struggle, the Iraqi
Parliament approved a new government on December 21,
representing all the country's dominant political movements.
The March 7 parliamentary elections resulted in an almost
dead race between incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's
coalition The Rule of Law, which received 89 of 325 seats,
and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's coalition Iraqiyyah
(Iraq's List), which, through alliance with Sunni Muslim
groups, took 91 seats. The turnout was 62.4 percent. There
were details of irregularities and 52 of the candidate
politicians, one of whom won a parliamentary seat, had their
candidacies annulled after the election because of alleged
ties with the banned Bath Party. Al-Maliki struggled for the
rest of the year to retain power. He was supported by the
radical Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, led by the
minister Muqtada al-Sadr, and succeeded in negotiating a
November government and government record in which power was
balanced between the various factions as well as between the
ethnic and religious groups. However, the Ministry of the
Interior, Defense and National Security still lacked
ministers at the end of the year. Allawi, who was forced to
relinquish the post of prime minister, was appointed as
compensation to the head of the newly formed National
Council for Strategic Policy.
During the year, WikiLeaks published hundreds of
thousands of reports that revealed the US military's assault
on civilians and its inability to deal with torture and
other crimes committed by Iraqi soldiers. A typical
documented incident took place at a roadblock: a car
approached at high speed, the soldiers gave a stop signal
and fired warning shots, but the car continued, then the
soldiers shot at the car and killed seven civilians, two of
them children. In total, the published documents reported
109,000 dead in violence between 2004 and 2009, of which
66,081 were civilians. On August 31, the last American
soldiers left Iraq. At that time, there were nearly 50,000
Americans who would educate and support Iraqi colleagues.
According to
COUNTRYAAH, violence continued in the vacuum of power that prevailed.
According to the Iraq Body Count organization, nearly 4,000
civilians were killed in various violent incidents during
the year. It was the lowest figure since the 2003 invasion,
but with an average of two explosions a day, few people
could feel safe. Particularly vulnerable were Shia Muslims
and Christians who were attacked by the Sunni Muslim
jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq. For example, on
November 1, at least 40 Christians were killed in a hostage
frame in a church in Baghdad. The Islamic State of Iraq was
also judged to be behind several bloody and large-scale
robberies, including against the central bank in Baghdad.
General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali and
cousin of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was executed
in Baghdad on January 25. al-Majid had held a number of key
posts during the Saddam regime, e.g. Defense Minister,
Minister of the Interior and Head of the Intelligence
Service. He had been sentenced to death four times, most
recently in January when he was found guilty of ordering the
massacre in the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 when
5,000 people were gassed to death. Tariq Aziz, one of
Saddam's closest men and for many years the president's face
to the outside world, was sentenced to death on October 26
for his role in attacks against several religiously based
movements during the Saddam era. Aziz was imprisoned since
2003 and was seriously ill.
The UN Security Council voted December 15 to lift most of
the remaining sanctions on Iraq, restore Iraq's control of
its oil revenues and liquidate the so-called oil-to-food
program. The sanctions had been introduced in 1991 to
prevent Iraq from building weapons of mass destruction. Some
sanctions, which had to do with the Kuwait border dispute,
still remained.
In February, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
granted Iraq a $ 3.6 billion loan to help the country
restore its balance of payments and build up its
infrastructure. Iraq's economy was 90 per cent dependent on
oil and had been hit hard by falling oil prices in 2009.
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