The return of the plunderer: Why Iraq cannot survive another Maliki

In the Green Zone’s shadow, where the reek of treachery is as heavy as the air in a Baghdad summer, a specter is rising. Nouri al-Maliki—the man who oversaw the intentional dismantling of a nation—seeks a return to the prime minister’s office. This is more than a political calculation. It is a final act of contemptuous defiance in the face of the several hundred thousand Iraqis whose lives have been tossed in the fire of his sectarian megalomania.

To know Maliki means to know the banality of the kleptocrat. Maliki was the ultimate double agent. He pocketed American billions and M1 Abrams tanks with the hand of gratitude, and with the other hand, he handed the sovereignty of Iraq to the mullahs of Tehran. Maliki was the ultimate “trusted proxy” who turned on the Americans the moment the last American boot left the ground in 2011 and used the machinery of the state to turn himself into a personal tool of repression to crush all of his competitors and to purge the Sunnis from the body politic.

Al-Maliki’s years in power will not be remembered for rebuilding the state but for emptying it out. Al-Maliki’s regime has long been accused of presiding over one of the most egregious periods of graft in the country’s modern history. Billions of dollars were siphoned off while the lights were out, the water was rotting, the hospitals were crumbling, and a growing percentage of the population was unemployed.

Investigative journalism and financial analysis, including but not limited to Bloomberg reports, have repeatedly highlighted suspicious funds traceable to Maliki’s relatives and close allies: foreign properties, shell companies, and funds that cannot be accounted for by anyone’s salary. Iraqi citizens have stood by as their country’s wealth was drained into foreign bank accounts, as their children waited in line for gas and jobs that never materialized. This was no corruption; it was pillage never seen in modern history.

These are not only staggering numbers but a reminder of a heist of biblical proportions. Bloomberg and the integrity commissions have identified a black hole in the future of Iraq: “$500 billion—half of the country’s oil wealth over eight years vanished under his administration.” While the widows of Basra and the orphans of Mosul were searching for a crust of bread, the Maliki clan was amassing a dynasty of wealth. Charges of billions of dollars in Jordanian banks and offshore accounts for his son, Ahmad Maliki, and inner-circle associates are the biggest theft of wealth from the poor to the corrupt in history. This was no “mismanagement”—it was a deliberate, industrial-scale looting of the state.

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However, this is not the only reason for the destruction. al-Maliki’s worst and longest-lasting legacy is the sectarian use of the state. During his tenure, the state’s apparatus, which was supposed to be a source of unity, became an instrument of Shiite control. The security forces became politicized. The judiciary became compromised. Critics faced intimidation, arrest, execution, or exile. The enforced removal of Sunnis from Baghdad neighborhoods is a black spot on his and his Shiite militia’s record. Accounts from human rights groups spoke of secret torture prisons and abuses by militia forces who operated with state tacit complicity. This is a state where fear, not law, is the governing principle.

And where, in all of this, was the moral canon of the country in its fall into the abyss? Let us speak, finally, of the ultimate enabler, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Too long has the “Quietist” of Najaf been cloaked in the fiction of its neutrality. However, silence in the face of a kleptocracy is not neutrality, but rather complicity. Sistani, in its provision of “religious cover” for the Shiite political blocs, has made possible a group of religious thieves who have cloaked themselves in the garb of the faith as they have emptied the pockets of the faithful. This defunct and worthless “Marja’iya” has murmured on occasion of “reform.” However, it has yet to have the courage to dismantle its system of “Muhasasa” quotas, feeding as it does the very monsters it pretends to be so distressed by. Sistani is the velvet glove on the iron fist of the kleptocracy, striking as it does with no loss of “legitimacy.” Transfers of billions of dollars to his hometown in Iran cannot be ignored.

This is not an act of sacrilege to name. This is an act of accountability.

Al-Sistani’s role has been critical in protecting Shiite politicians from accountability, as it has enabled corruption to take root in sectarian guise behind the façade of religiosity, resulting in “a system in which religion is politicized, opposition is delegitimized, and stealing is sanctified.”

The tragedy deepens if one considers who helped al-Maliki rise to power. He was not simply the victim of fate. He was helped along by Americans, who saw in him a stabilizing factor, a partner, a protector against chaos. The naivete of Americans knows no bounds, and it is inexcusable. This experiment has been a disaster. Iraq splintered further. The Islamic State reached new heights. Americans found themselves under fire from groups that had grown stronger under the same system Americans had helped create.

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The Americans conferred this crown upon him, and he used it to betray them and his own people. He now comes to finish what he started, confident that the memory of the masses has a short shelf-life and that his benefactors’ pockets in Tehran are deep. If the Iraqis allow this political corpse to rise from its grave, they are not merely electing a Prime Minister; they are signing the death certificate of what remains of their nation. Enough with seeking comfort in the prayers of the silent and the promises of thieves. The bomb is ticking, and its fuse was lit in 2006 by the same man who now says he is the only one who can turn off the flames.

This is why the streets are so angry. This is why despair seems to last forever. This is why Iraqi youth talk about exile instead of reform.

Iraq is not short on talent or resources. It is short on leadership that regards the country as its home. al-Maliki is no anomaly. He is the embodiment and representation of an institution that consumes its own kind while promising order.

If he returns, it won’t be a reconciliation. It will be a confirmation that the kleptocracy is a closed shop, that there is no accountability, and that the looters are there to stay and govern until there is nothing left to govern over.

But history has never been infinitely patient.

Iraqis have lived through the war, the sanctions, the invasion, the occupation, the terror, and the looting. They have buried their children and their futures. They know the faces of those who looted them, those who facilitated them, and those who gave the religious stamp of approval to the looters to drain the banks and the American SWIFT system to wire the funds out of the country—to Switzerland, London, Paris, Tehran, and New York. And they know that a nation cannot live under perpetual impunity.

The comeback of al-Maliki will not help to restore Iraq. This will only show that the system is irreparable—and when the reckoning finally comes, it will be merciless.

For a people deprived of justice, memory becomes resistance. And memory has not forgotten.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.