Sectarian Rule or US-Backed Status Quo in Iraq?
The story praises a 25-year-old Iraqi, Anwar Ibrahim, running for parliament to push reform and end 'domination of certain parties.' Noble goals, certainly. But it's a bit rich to focus solely on the symptoms—the 'sectarian politics'—without once mentioning the 2003 US invasion that deliberately dismantled Iraq's secular government and institutionalized sectarian divisions. That's right, the US
occupation, with figures like Paul Bremer, literally rewrote Iraqi law to establish a quota-based, sectarian power-sharing system, ensuring competing factions that couldn't truly govern but were easily manipulated. So, while these brave young Iraqis fight against a rigged system, Al-Monitor's framing obscures the fact that the 'entrenched elite' wasn't just a spontaneous local phenomenon but a
direct consequence of US adventurism, which destabilized the region and created the very chaos now being 'reformed.' It's like cheering firefighters while ignoring the arsonists who bankrolled the fire.