Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani
Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani is a prominent Iraqi politician. He began his political activity with the Islamic Dawa Party as a member of the Maysan Governorate Council, then founded the Al-Furatin Political Movement in 2019, and held several positions until he became Prime Minister of Iraq on October 13, 2022.
The formation of a government in October 2022, a year after elections were held, initiated a new stage in the evolution of Iraq’s investment climate. The Government of Iraq (GOI) continues to dominate Iraq’s economy, with oil exports serving as the basis of Iraq’s GDP. Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani has stressed his government’s openness to doing business with U.S. and other Western firms and has taken some positive steps in that regard. Nevertheless, the Iraqi bureaucracy, legal and regulatory obstacles, and corruption—investment climate features that persist despite changes in government leadership—pose many obstacles to doing business in Iraq. Additionally, officials who favor commercial relations with Iranian, Chinese, or other non-Western companies or governments are found in positions of authority throughout the GOI.
Al-Sudani belongs to the Islamic Dawa Party, and participated with the opposing parties in the “Shaabaniya Uprising” in 1991, which were demonstrations and protests that took place to demand the overthrow of the regime of the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, following the Second Gulf War. The Iraqi authorities were able at that time to regain control over the cities that witnessed these protests. After 2003, Al-Sudani continued to work within the Dawa Party organizations, then he became close to the party’s leader, Nouri al-Maliki, who later formed the State of Law coalition, during which he assumed many positions in ministries and responsibilities.
Muhammad Shiaa Sabbar Hatem Al-Sudani was born in the Iraqi capital (Baghdad) in 1970 to a middle-class family hailing from Maysan Governorate, located in southeastern Iraq. His father, Shiaa, was an employee at the Agricultural Bank, and his grandfather, Sheikh Sabbar Hatem Al-Sayhoud, is one of the well-known sheikhs in Maysan Governorate.
When he was ten years old, his family faced a problem with the former Iraqi regime because his father belonged to the Islamic Dawa Party (one of the Shiite parties), which was banned at the time. The Iraqi government arrested Shia and then executed the father along with 5 members of his family in 1980 immediately after the father's return from treatment in France.
His son Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Baghdad and graduated as an agricultural engineer from the College of Agriculture in 1992. He then worked in the private sector for 5 years after graduating.
In the six years that preceded the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, he worked in the Directorate of Agriculture in Maysan Governorate, and assumed many responsibilities, including heading the Agriculture Division of the Kimit region, the Ali al-Sharqi region, and the Plant Production Department. He was the supervising engineer of the Iraqi National Research Program with the United Nations' FAO before the invasion.
After 2003, he worked as a coordinator between the body supervising the administration of Maysan Governorate and the coalition authority for the American forces in 2003. He then assumed the responsibility of the mayor (the capital of the administrative departments) in the city of Amara, the center of Maysan Governorate, in 2004. He held several ministerial positions (Minister of Human Rights, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Minister of Finance, Minister of Industry) and responsibilities between 2003 and 2022.
Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani's political career began with the Islamic Dawa Party after he was elected as a member of the Maysan Governorate Council between 2005 and 2009. After the victory of the "State of Law" coalition, led by the head of the Dawa Party, Nouri al-Maliki, in 2009 in the local elections in Maysan Governorate, Al-Sudani was elected governor of Maysan on April 21, 2009.
Al-Sudani was appointed Minister of Human Rights after the formation of Nouri al-Maliki's second government on December 22, 2010. In mid-2011, he was assigned the duties of head of the National Commission for Accountability and Justice until October 2012. In 2013, he was assigned the duties of Minister of Agriculture in the second Maliki government, then Minister of Immigration and Displacement in 2014, then he took over the management of the Institution for Political Prisoners. His duties as Director of the Institution for Political Prisoners ended in January 2015.
He participated in the 2014 legislative elections for the first time as a representative of Baghdad Governorate within the “State of Law Coalition” for the Dawa Party, and won a parliamentary seat. He assumed the position of Minister of Labor and Social Affairs on September 8 during the tenure of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in 2014, and continued in his position for 4 years until the end of the term of the al-Abadi government. Al-Abadi appointed him Minister of Finance between 2014 and 2015 for a limited period, then he assumed the position of Chairman of the Child Welfare Authority in the country, then he was appointed Minister of Trade for the period extending from October 2015 until April 28, 2016.
He was appointed Minister of Industry on August 14, 2016 for a few months. He was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Arab Labor Organization in the Egyptian capital (Cairo) between 2017 and 2018. In 2018, he was elected for the second time as a member of the Iraqi Parliament, representing the “State of Law Coalition,” during which he participated in many parliamentary committees. Then, on October 10, 2021, he was re-elected as a member of the Iraqi Parliament for the third time in a row.
After the popular demonstrations that began in Iraq on October 1, 2019, Al-Sudani submitted his resignation from the Islamic Dawa Party, then forming the “Al-Furatin Political Movement” and assuming the position of Secretary-General of the new party. On July 25, 2022, the leaders of the Coordination Framework (the political bloc that includes all Iraqi Shiite parties except the Sadrist movement) unanimously agreed to nominate him for the position of prime minister.
In July 2022, the Coordinating Framework Shia political coalition decided to nominate him for prime minister in Iraq. He was officially appointed Prime Minister of the Iraqi Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and the Iraqi Parliament granted confidence to the Sudanese government to include 21 ministers, and he formed his government commissioned by the Coordination Framework. Al-Sudani is considered a second-tier leader among Iraqi politicians, and the coordinating framework viewed him as one of the most experienced figures in executive work due to his assuming many ministries and responsibilities between 2003 and 2022.
Al-Sudani - who was a guest on the episode (09 April 2023) of the “Al-Muqabalah” program on Al-Jazeera - believed that the Iraqis were optimistic about what he called change after 2003, but they collided with terrorism, mismanagement, and rampant corruption, stressing in another context that the Arabs committed a strategic mistake by distancing themselves from Iraq in the post-occupation period.
Al-Sudani compared Iraq before the occupation and Iraq after it, and said that a minority ruled before 2003 and there was an unclear sectarianism limited to the decision makers, and there was no Freedoms to the point that a citizen is subjected to arrest just because he had a dream about the regime, while after 2003 there became freedoms and expression of opinion, and power became based on the people, and the most important thing is that the Iraqis were able to maintain the peaceful transfer of power, and maturity in the political process and understanding of the political system.
Despite the beautiful picture he painted of the period after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Iraqi Prime Minister acknowledged that the country witnessed chaos that affected development and services. There was a decline in the level of the economy, mismanagement, rampant corruption, and popular reluctance to participate in the elections. However, he said that the Iraqis had understood the lesson in light of the political and security crises that they experienced, and they began to understand the limits of democracy and freedoms and to live together in their country without eliminating the other.
In the same context, he ruled out the possibility that the Shiite component would have controlled the political process in post-2003 Iraq, stressing that in all elections this component wins half plus one, which enables it, for example, to form a government alone and elect a prime minister. However, he believes that matters cannot be managed. Without the participation of the rest of the components, he said that he personally, as prime minister, does not have absolute authority, and there is a separation between parliamentary and judicial powers.
He also denied the existence of targeting the Sunni component in Iraq as part of the previous regime, and said that part of this component was rejecting what he called the process of change, but with the passage of time everyone came to believe that the political process remains, highlighting that the component was also subjected to injustice by the previous regime. He was subjected to oppression by the Islamic State, which infiltrated Sunni areas.
He considered that it is in the interest of the current political regime in Iraq not to follow national or religious backgrounds, and that he personally makes his decisions not according to a personal tendency and a special vision, but rather based on the interest of Iraq and the Iraqis, indicating that diversity is a factor of strength for Iraqis and not a factor of weakness.
Regarding Iraq’s return to the Arab, regional and international arena, the Iraqi official saw that his country was occupied by a decision of the UN Security Council, and after 2011 it began to govern its institutions, and the Arab Summit was held in Baghdad in 2012 and this was not by Iranian or American will, saying that “it is one of the strategic mistakes.” What the Arabs committed was their distancing themselves from Iraq during that period, and the Arabs were convinced of the necessity of their return to Iraq and not of the return of Iraq to the Arabs.
The Arabs also admitted - according to Al-Sudani - that the ISIS threat was not a threat to Iraq alone, but rather to the entire region, stressing that Iraq fought the organization on behalf of the region.
In the second part of his interview with the "Al-Muqabla" program, the Iraqi Prime Minister touched on his personal and professional career, and revealed that his father was executed by the previous regime because of his membership in the Dawa Party, when he was ten years old, which affected his psychology. He talked about his activity in the Dawa Party and the positions he held, leading up to his nomination by the Coordination Framework in July 2022 to assume the position of Prime Minister, succeeding Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who assumed the presidency of the government in May 2020.
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