When an overcrowded ferry capsized in the Tigris River in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul last week, prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi flew in person to the grieving city to see for himself the unfolding tragedy. After touring a hospital and morgue in the city, Abdul-Mahdi said he was following the incident “with pain and sadness.” The next day Iraqi President Barham Salih, whose post is ceremonial, and Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Al-Halbousi also travelled to Mosul to show their sympathy with the victims in what was just another publicity stunt. Political hypocrisy was also on full display by other top Iraqi officials who made similar gestures to the public by eliciting expressions of concern about the ferry disaster. As is often the case, Iraq's embattled political elites did not miss the chance to manipulate the misfortune and appear before the cameras or make public statements that critics described as being aimed at campaigning and self-promotion. Nearly 100 people died, including women and children, when the overloaded ferry capsized amidst strong currents caused by the river's overflowing from the nearby Mosul Dam. Nearly 170 people were on board, many celebrating the Kurdish New Year of Newroz which is also marked by Iraqis as the first day of spring. Videos showed people struggling to stay afloat amid floating bodies in the fast-flowing river. Interim reports suggested that the 21 March sinking of the ferry was partly due to negligence and corruption. They cited lax regulations, poor safety inspections and badly coordinated government efforts as factors leading to the disaster. Several officials were arrested on charges relating to the incident, and dozens more could face legal action. Abdul-Mahdi suspended Mosul governor Nawfal Al-Agob from his post and ordered an investigation “to determine responsibility”. However, none of this lifts the responsibility from ruling cliques known for their corruption and ineptitude, qualities that have had disastrous consequences for Iraq as well as astronomical fiscal costs. Not unexpectedly, the ferry disaster sparked intense public anger against the government. Protesters in Mosul heckled Salih and forced his security detail to whisk him into a fast-driven military vehicle to escape. The tragic irony is that the ferry disaster has shown yet again how broken Iraq's political system is and how rotten it is as a result of mismanagement, corruption and rentierism. Sixteen years after the toppling of former dictator Saddam Hussein, corruption remains one of the top concerns of most Iraqis. Since 2004, the international NGO Transparency International has put Iraq among the most-corrupt countries in the world out of the nearly 200 surveyed. Most of Iraq's political elites are believed to be involved in one type of corruption or another, manipulating the country's rich resources in order to create rents they can use to secure control of the government. Entrenched corruption in Iraq in all its forms of bribery, embezzlement, extortion, patronage, cronyism, fraud, legal plunder, nepotism and plutocracy has become systematic and institutionalised. It has benefited the ruling political groups, their cronies and their allies in business, and it has hurt ordinary Iraqis. Out of the nearly $1 trillion Iraq has made in oil sales since 2003, just a small fraction has gone to development or reached the country's public services. Corruption is at the root of Iraq's problems. Its determinants include the exercise of econinfluence by political factions, weak political competition and the ruling parties' discretionary powers to allocate resources. The outcomes of corruption in Iraq have been enormous, including political turmoil, a failed state and frequent man-made disasters. As allegations and counter-allegations over the sinking of the ferry in Mosul have shown, corruption not only caused the disaster but also exacerbated its impacts. The claims match much of what most Iraqis already know, which is that corruption is associated with high levels of government, the ruling groups and local patronage politics such as in the militias. Graft, bribery, embezzlement and extortion by high-level officials are widespread and take many forms. Last month, the US news outlet the Daily Beast disclosed that the US department of justice was investigating a military contracting company, Sallyport Global Services, to find out if it played a role in the alleged bribery of Iraqi government officials in exchange for contracts that cost American taxpayers billions. It reported that powerful individuals, including head of the Daawa Islamic Party and Iraq's former prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, his son Ahmed and his son-in-law Yasser Sukhail Al-Maliki, were involved in the bribery case. On 16 March, the Baghdad newspaper Al-Alam Al-Jadeed reported a “huge accumulation” in Yasser Sukhail Al-Maliki, currently an MP, and his wife Hawra's rentierism. New forms of rentierism have developed in Iraq since 2003 based on revenues from oil thefts and smuggling, massive land-grabs and the extortion of customs money by militias and other armed groups that benefit from the country's deficient borders. Reports of oil-smuggling from oilfields and pipelines across Iraq have been rampant. Thousands of barrels of oil are stolen everyday by armed groups and political factions and smuggled through Iran, Turkey and the Arabian Gulf, costing Iraq billions of dollars each year. Militias now collect customs tariffs and taxes on goods transported from the Kurdish Region in the north and neighbouring countries, while political factions share the control of ports and official crossings to generate funds. The militias and political factions have also been profiting from Central Bank's auctions, which are the main source of dollars for banks and money-transfer bureaus. In some cases, foreign-currency exchanges in Iraqi cities pay fees to the militias to protect their businesses. Some of these are known to have vast business empires with large shares in construction, trade and import and export companies. In many lavish neighbourhoods of Baghdad, huge chunks of land that belong to the government have been seized by powerful people misusing their positions in the establishment. In the old Muthana Airport area in central Baghdad, high-rise housing towers are under construction that locals say belong to Al-Maliki and his cronies. By taking possession of vast plots of land, politicians build large fortunes and deprive millions of Iraqis of land on which they rely for constructing badly needed houses in overpopulated cities and towns. A common practice in many of the cities liberated from the Islamic State (IS) terror group has been the involvement of the paramilitary groups known as Hashd in economic activities, reaping illicit profits largely through extortion. One highly revealing example was the sunken ferry in Mosul, which one Iraqi MP revealed was partially owned by the Assab Ahul-Haq militia, together with the resort it was serving. Ikhlass Al-Duliami, who represents Mosul in parliament, told the Kurdish Rudaw outlet on 23 March that the militia had taken over 30 per cent of the project after it was deployed in the city following its liberation from IS. While the revelation adds another twist to the hosts of corruption stories involving rent revenues by multiple political groups and militias, it also sheds light on actions and inactions that have led to disasters such as the ferry sinking and the damage it has caused. Negligence or the violation of safety regulations could be the direct causes of the ferry's sinking in Mosul, but greed and corruption were really to blame for the disaster. The latter have become so deeply entrenched in the bureaucratic and political system of the country that many Iraqis now believe that their country is heading towards further disasters.
