• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Iraqi Cabinet

As the Iraqi debate over federalism unfolded in the occupation's first three years, Iraq's political parties battled not only for victory in the country's first democratic elections, but also for control of the central ministries and their powerful chains of directors general. Under the CPA, members of the Iraqi Governing Council were able to exploit what control Bremer allowed them over the ministries. Each council member was permitted to appoint a minister and thereby control a ministry.

This undisguised power grab continued under the Iraqi Interim Government established after the return of sovereignty on June 28, 2004. Given the traditional mores of Arab culture and widespread nepotism under Saddam, IGC members-and many of the interim ministers who followed them-appointed their sons, cousins, and other members of their own families, tribes, or parties to ministry positions, establishing a ruling clique that further stocked ministerial ranks with political loyalists.

Almost overnight, a majority of the ministries of Iraq's central government - once controlled by the Ba'ath Party, but largely staffed by technocrats - became aligned with, and then dominated by, competing political parties. Sadrists seized the Health and Education ministries. Employing the model of service delivery embraced by Hezbollah - the radical Islamic Shi'a group based in Lebanon - they openly deployed ministry resources to build support among the Shi'a underclass. At the same time, SCIRI, the largest Shi'a political party, took control of the Ministry of the Interior - and its powerful internal security apparatus - and later the Ministry of Finance. The major Sunni party, the Iraqi Accord Front, would exert a lesser degree of control over the newly formed Ministry of Defense. Who received services and who did not was increasingly decided on the basis of political allegiance and sectarian identity.

The capture of central ministries by political parties had enduring consequences for reconstruction and for the development of a functioning Iraqi state. A new cadre of directors general was selected for party loyalty rather than technical competence. As parties put their people in power, political rivalries affected relations among ministries and between national and provincial governments. Ministerial appointments of provincial officials injected national party politics into local affairs. The result was, at times, a significant breakdown in local order. In several instances, the Minister of Interior refused to assent to the dismissal of police chiefs by provincial authorities and insisted that party loyalists remain in the job-exactly the kind of central-government control Ambassador Bremer's reforms had sought to reverse.

Another dynamic eroded ministry competence. Each time the cabinet was reshuffled and ministers changed, a whole new clique moved into the upper echelons of ministry staff. Institutional knowledge of ministry operations, as well as training paid for by U.S. capacity-development programs, went out the door with their predecessors.