Mr Trump, Iraq’s kleptocracy must be dismantled: cutting aid is a laughable and naïve approach

If Nouri Al-Maliki returns to power, the United States cutting support to Iraq would be a moral half-measure. Iraq does not suffer from a shortage of ultimatums. It suffers from a systemic criminal enterprise masquerading as governance. What Iraq needs is not punishment by neglect, but surgical dismantling of the entire state machinery that has looted the country blind since 2003 and handed it, piece by piece, to militias and foreign patrons.

Al-Maliki is not merely a failed leader. He is the incarnation of Iraq’s post-invasion catastrophe: sectarian rule, institutional collapse, and the conversion of the state into a private estate for armed gangs and political parasites. Under his watch, corruption metastasized, militias were legalized, and sovereignty was auctioned to Tehran. His return would be a declaration that Iraq has surrendered any remaining claim to justice.

If Washington is truly serious about preventing Iraq’s final descent into the abyss, it must aim not at pressure, but at rupture.

The first step must be the dissolution of the Popular Mobilization Forces. The PMF is not a national defense institution. It is a constellation of sectarian militias, many directly loyal to Iran, operating with impunity, running secret prisons, silencing dissent, and turning neighborhoods into private fiefdoms. A state cannot exist alongside a parallel armed authority. Every militia, regardless of sect, flag, or slogan, must be dismantled. The gun cannot outrank the law.

Second, the financial lifelines of corruption must be severed. Iraqi politicians, members of parliament, and militia commanders did not steal billions by accident. Those fortunes did not evaporate innocently. They sit in European banks, American real estate, shell companies, and accounts in Tehran. Washington knows where the money went. So do its allies. Every frozen account, every seized property, every exposed laundering scheme would do more to liberate Iraq than a thousand speeches on democracy.

Return the money, President Trump. Every stolen dinar.

Third, Iraq must rebuild a professional national army, loyal to the state — not to clerics, parties, or foreign capitals. The old Iraqi military, for all its sins, was at least a coherent professional institution. Paul Bremer, Iraq’s first inexperienced and naïve Civil Administrator, erased the Iraqi army with a bureaucrat’s pen and plunged the country into an endless misery, anarchy, and civil war. George Bush, squinting earnestly beside Nouri al-Maliki, declared he saw a “good man.” He saw nothing. Al-Maliki was Tehran’s puppet, and he played the American president like a provincial fool. Today, Iraq’s armed landscape is a criminal bazaar. A country cannot function when force is privatised, and accountability is optional.

Fourth, the era of impunity must end. International law exists for moments like this. The International Criminal Court should investigate militia leaders responsible for systematic torture, disappearances, and mass killings since 2003. These crimes are not rumors. They are documented. The message must be strong and unmistakable: power does not erase guilt.

Fifth, Iraq must sever all military cooperation with Iran. No sovereign state can survive while outsourcing its security to a neighbor that profits from its weakness. Tehran breathes through Iraq’s militias, banks, and borders. Puncture that lung, and Iran’s influence collapses.

But here is the line Washington must never cross again: collective punishment.

No sanctions regime should ever resemble the one imposed on Iraq in the 1990s — a moral abomination that starved civilians, destroyed infrastructure, and killed hundreds of thousands of children while leaving the ruling elite untouched. That catastrophe was not policy failure; it was policy cruelty. Justice must target criminals, not populations.

The tools already exist: financial intelligence, asset freezes, legal indictments, and coordinated international action. Trump does not need new weapons. He needs political courage and an experienced cadre prepared to face America’s original sin in Iraq—the war launched on a lie of WMD, the country shattered, and accountability forever deferred.

Trump must insist on the creation of a special, independent Iraqi court, staffed by Iraqi judges shielded from intimidation, to prosecute corruption and crimes against civilians. Let trials be publicly watched live by millions of Iraqis, as they watched Saddam’s trial. Let evidence be exposed. Let verdicts be earned. Iraqis must see — finally — that justice is not a myth reserved for the weak.

And Washington must confront one of the most poisonous myths sustaining this kleptocracy: the endless invocation of “historical injustice” — al-mazloumiya al-tarikhiyya. Al-Maliki and his circle have weaponised this narrative to excuse theft, repression, and sectarian rule. Past suffering does not grant a license to steal the future. Victimhood does not sanctify corruption.

One final truth must be acknowledged,  not to rehabilitate tyranny, but to expose hypocrisy. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But one crime he did not tolerate was the embezzlement of state funds; steal a dollar and you would end up in jail. Today’s rulers steal billions openly, shamelessly, and with religious cover. Iraq traded a single tyrant for a cartel of thieves, and the result has been catastrophic.

If Trump truly wants to transform Iraq, he must stop thinking in terms of exerting pressure and start thinking in terms of dismantling the entire corrupt structure. Break the militias. Expose the money. Isolate the criminals. Restore institutions. Return stolen wealth. And above all, prove to Iraqis that justice is not a slogan whispered before betrayal.

Al-Maliki’s return would be a final insult to a nation already bled dry. Preventing his return is not enough. The system that produced Al-Maliki must be torn out, destroyed, and forever buried.

Iraq does not need another warning. It needs reckoning.

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