Iraqi elections: An alternative for India

The present obsession with the Bihar election on November 11, 2025 however, India additionally must concentrate on one other election going down on the identical day, 4,000 kilometres away, in Iraq.

Features and significance

While some systemic options of the sixth Iraqi parliamentary election are comparatively straightforward to grasp, others could make even hardened Bihar pollsters blink. There are 7,744 candidates for 329 seats with 32 events and a lot of independents within the election primarily based on proportional illustration. Nearly 40% of candidates are under 40 years of age. In an in any other case patriarchal society, near a 3rd of the candidates are ladies, leveraging 1 / 4 of seats reserved for them. The outcomes may set off months of horse-trading among the many three sectarian teams, broadly primarily based on Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish events, earlier than a majority coalition emerges. The incumbent Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, tasks himself as a “Sushasan Babu”, claiming to have accomplished over 2,582 long-delayed tasks in his three-year rule. He has added one million new jobs to the already bloated paperwork. His detractors accuse him of being pro-American. The polity and electioneering are characterised by corruption, disbursal of freebies and rampant kleptocracy institutionalised by a disingenuous “Muhasasa” system that reserves practically a thousand profitable positions for the profitable coalition. These flaws and the violent suppression of youth protests in 2019-20 have engendered fashionable apathy. Only 21 million of the 30 million eligible voters have registered, and fewer than 40% of the latter are more likely to vote, leading to practically three-fourths absenteeism. Nevertheless, the biometric voter I-cards are reportedly altering palms for round 100 {dollars}. Thanks to quite a few militias working amok, weapons, goons and ethno-sectarianism are extra ample than in Bihar’s badlands. Kurdish separatism, lingering Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorism, and Iranian patronage of a number of Iraqi Shia militias are extra problems. Further, the election boycott name by populist Shia chief Moqtada al-Sadr, whose occasion bought the very best variety of seats within the earlier election, would depart the sphere to the ruling Shia Coordination Framework. While Mr. al-Sudani is broadly anticipated to proceed, the fractured Iraqi polity has resulted in a brand new Prime Minister after each previous election. Nevertheless, after the tumultuous legacy of the Saddam period repression, wars, terrorism and sectarian strife, holding elections at common intervals marks Iraq’s return to imperfect democratic normalcy.

Second, the approaching parliamentary elections have regional and even international significance in view of Iraq’s geostrategic significance and standing as OPEC’s second-largest producer. During the previous 20 years of turmoil, the divided nation has been an area the place the animosity between the U.S. and Iran performed out. In case a decisive election leads to secure governance, Iraq can resume its unencumbered sovereignty. It has already negotiated a withdrawal of the U.S.-led multinational drive by September 2026, deployed because the 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. Iran is set to keep up its stranglehold on Shia militias in Iraq, in addition to use Iraq as a market and conduit for busting the U.S. sanctions. But Tehran has been considerably weakened by Israeli army actions over the previous two years, which have attenuated Iranian army may, curbed its nuclear and missile capabilities, and decimated its regional proxies. The Trump administration’s “most stress” insurance policies and “Snapback” of the UN sanctions have additionally hamstrung Iranian financial system. Pro-Iran Iraqi militias have largely eschewed army actions in opposition to the U.S. and Israel. A robust, nationalist elected authorities in Baghdad might benefit from a weakened Iran to start the fragile however essential technique of disarming the closely armed militias by both co-opting them into common armed forces or metamorphosing them into political events. Similarly, Kurds leveraged the disarray in Baghdad to deepen their longstanding quest for autonomy by way of the ‘Kurdistan Regional Government’. As Baghdad will get its political and safety act in place, this course of may get reversed.

The Iraqi oil and gasoline sector has remained largely unaffected by political and safety flux, Iraq has been producing round 4.5 mbpd and exporting practically 3.6 mbpd, with China and India being the highest two prospects in 2024. It claims 5.5 mbpd manufacturing capability and has signed a number of agreements with Chinese, American, and different Western oil and gasoline majors to ramp up manufacturing to 7 mbps by 2029. Reducing gasoline flaring is a precedence to utilise it as a gasoline for energy technology.

India-Iraq ties

India had shut ties with Iraq throughout the Eighties, with practically $10 billion price of building tasks and oil exploration blocks. In 2024-25, whole bilateral commerce was $33.35 billion, making Iraq our eighth largest commerce associate, albeit with a steadiness of 9:1 in Iraq’s favour as a result of our dependence on crude. As Russian oil provides recede, Iraq is more likely to resume its position as India’s largest crude provider, additional tilting the commerce imbalance. Once the electoral mud settles, India ought to rebalance its bilateral ties by prioritising highest degree re-engagement. Apart from reviving the socio-economic complementarity, such synergy would ameliorate the rising energy vacuum within the northern Gulf. It would additionally present that the ties between our two democracies are usually not transactional, however primarily based on mutual pursuits and shared values.

Mahesh Sachdev, Retired Indian Ambassador specialising within the Arab world and oil points