B2 · Upper Intermediate
15 min
geopoliticsgovernancemiddle eastconflictpolitical history
The Country Between Two Powers: Iraq and the Politics of the Possible
El País Entre Dos Poderes: Iraq y la Política de lo Posible
This week, Iraq's president named Ali al-Zaidi as prime minister-designate after Nouri al-Maliki and incumbent Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani withdrew their candidacies. Fletcher and Octavio dig into how Iraq's political system actually works, who really controls the country, and what this moment means for Iraq's future.
Esta semana, el presidente iraquí nombró a Ali al-Zaidi como primer ministro designado, después de que Nouri al-Maliki y el primer ministro en funciones Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani retiraran sus candidaturas. Fletcher y Octavio exploran cómo funciona el sistema político iraquí, quién controla realmente el país y qué significa este momento para el futuro de Iraq.
7 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| designado | designated / designate | El presidente iraquí nombró a Ali al-Zaidi como primer ministro designado después de que los otros candidatos se retiraran. |
| sectario | sectarian | El sistema político iraquí se basa en un reparto sectario del poder entre chiítas, sunníes y kurdos. |
| milicias | militias | Las milicias dentro de Iraq obedecen a veces más a Teherán que al gobierno de Bagdad. |
| clientelar | based on patronage / clientelistic | Las redes clientelares permiten a los partidos distribuir empleos y recursos a cambio de lealtad política. |
| subjuntivo | subjunctive | Quiero que los estudiantes entiendan la diferencia entre el indicativo y el subjuntivo. |
| candidatura | candidacy | Maliki retiró su candidatura antes de que hubiera una votación formal en el parlamento. |
| manejable | manageable / controllable | Irán prefiere un Iraq estable y manejable que no cause problemas en la región. |
A name came across my desk this week that I'd honestly never heard before, and I've been covering this part of the world for twenty years.
Ali al-Zaidi, Iraq's new prime minister-designate.
And the more I read, the more I realized the story isn't really about him.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Lo interesante no es quién ganó, sino quién perdió y por qué.
The interesting thing isn't who won, but who lost and why.
Nouri al-Maliki retiró su candidatura.
Nouri al-Maliki withdrew his candidacy.
Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani también.
Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani too.
Eso nos dice mucho más sobre Iraq que el nombre del nuevo primer ministro.
That tells us far more about Iraq than the name of the new prime minister.
Right, and for listeners who don't follow Iraqi politics closely, those two names carry enormous weight.
Maliki especially.
He's one of the most consequential and, depending on who you ask, most damaging figures in the country's modern history.
Para entender esto bien, hay que empezar por el sistema político iraquí, porque es bastante particular.
To understand this properly, you have to start with the Iraqi political system, because it's quite distinctive.
Iraq tiene un sistema parlamentario, pero con una característica que lo define todo: el reparto sectario del poder, lo que llaman en árabe el muhasasa.
Iraq has a parliamentary system, but with one feature that defines everything: the sectarian division of power, what they call in Arabic the muhasasa.
The muhasasa.
Walk me through that, because I want listeners to really get how this works mechanically.
Bueno, después de la invasión estadounidense de 2003, los nuevos líderes iraquíes diseñaron un sistema en el que los tres principales grupos del país se reparten los cargos más importantes.
Well, after the American invasion of 2003, Iraq's new leaders designed a system where the three main groups share the top positions.
El presidente tiene que ser kurdo.
The president must be Kurdish.
El presidente del parlamento tiene que ser sunní.
The speaker of parliament must be Sunni.
Y el primer ministro tiene que ser chiíta.
And the prime minister must be Shia.
It's constitutionally baked in.
Not informal, not just a tradition.
Literally structured into how the government forms.
Sí, aunque en realidad no está escrito explícitamente en la constitución.
Yes, although it's not actually written explicitly in the constitution.
Es una convención que se ha convertido en ley no escrita.
It's a convention that has become unwritten law.
Pero en Iraq, las leyes no escritas a veces son más fuertes que las escritas.
But in Iraq, unwritten laws are sometimes stronger than written ones.
That's a line worth sitting with for a moment.
And it raises the obvious question: if the prime minister always has to be Shia, then the real competition is within that community.
Which is where the Coordination Framework comes in.
El Marco de Coordinación es la alianza de partidos chiítas pro-iraníes que domina el parlamento.
The Coordination Framework is the alliance of pro-Iranian Shia parties that dominates parliament.
Es una coalición amplia y no siempre unida, pero tiene suficiente poder para decidir quién llega a ser primer ministro.
It's a broad coalition, not always united, but it has enough power to decide who becomes prime minister.
Es el bloque que ha nombrado a al-Zaidi.
It's the bloc that has named al-Zaidi.
Pro-Iranian.
That phrase does a lot of work.
Because Iraq is also, nominally, a close partner of the United States.
You have American bases there.
Huge economic ties.
And yet the political machinery is largely steered by factions that answer, at least in part, to Tehran.
Iraq vive en esa contradicción permanente.
Iraq lives in that permanent contradiction.
Necesita el dinero americano, necesita la protección americana en algunos sentidos, pero también tiene una frontera larga y permeable con Irán, vínculos religiosos profundísimos entre las comunidades chiítas de los dos países, y milicias dentro de su propio territorio que obedecen más a Teherán que a Bagdad.
It needs American money, needs American protection in some respects, but it also has a long, permeable border with Iran, very deep religious ties between the Shia communities of both countries, and militias within its own territory that obey Tehran more than Baghdad.
I remember landing in Baghdad in 2007, during the surge, and even then you could feel that the Americans controlled the checkpoints and the Iranians controlled the conversation in a lot of neighborhoods.
The military reality and the political reality were running on completely separate tracks.
Y eso no ha cambiado fundamentalmente.
And that hasn't fundamentally changed.
Lo que ha cambiado es que ahora hay una guerra entre Irán y Estados Unidos en la región, lo cual convierte a Iraq en un terreno todavía más delicado.
What has changed is that there's now a war between Iran and the United States in the region, which makes Iraq an even more delicate piece of ground.
Nombrar a un nuevo primer ministro en este contexto no es un acto neutral.
Naming a new prime minister in this context is not a neutral act.
No, it really isn't.
So let's talk about who stepped aside first.
Maliki.
Former prime minister, twice.
And his story is, I think, essential to understanding what Iraq became after 2003.
Maliki gobernó Iraq de 2006 a 2014.
Maliki governed Iraq from 2006 to 2014.
Fue el primer ministro del momento más caótico del país después de la invasión.
He was the prime minister during the most chaotic period after the invasion.
Sobrevivió políticamente, lo cual ya es notable.
He survived politically, which is notable in itself.
Pero durante su segundo mandato, hizo algo que tuvo consecuencias devastadoras: marginó sistemáticamente a los sunníes del ejército y del gobierno.
But during his second term, he did something with devastating consequences: he systematically pushed Sunnis out of the army and government.
And that vacuum, that deliberate exclusion, is a significant part of why ISIS found such fertile ground.
The Sunni officers who were fired, the communities that felt abandoned by Baghdad, they were, some of them, ready to listen to anyone who offered an alternative.
Hay que tener cuidado de no simplificar demasiado.
We have to be careful not to oversimplify.
El ascenso del Estado Islámico tuvo muchas causas.
The rise of the Islamic State had many causes.
Pero sí es verdad que las políticas sectarias de Maliki hicieron que muchos sunníes sintieran que no tenían nada que defender en el estado iraquí.
But it is true that Maliki's sectarian policies made many Sunnis feel they had nothing to defend in the Iraqi state.
Eso fue un error político enorme.
That was an enormous political mistake.
He was pushed out in 2014, essentially.
International pressure, the disaster of Mosul falling in a matter of days.
And yet he never really left.
He stayed in parliament, kept his faction, kept running for the top job.
The fact that he withdrew this time tells you something.
Te dice que no tenía los votos.
It tells you he didn't have the votes.
El Marco de Coordinación es una alianza, pero no es monolítica.
The Coordination Framework is an alliance, but it's not monolithic.
Hay facciones dentro de las facciones.
There are factions within factions.
Y hay figuras, como Moqtada al-Sadr, que no forman parte del Marco pero que tienen suficiente influencia para bloquear ciertas candidaturas.
And there are figures, like Moqtada al-Sadr, who aren't part of the Framework but have enough influence to block certain candidacies.
Sadr.
Another name that carries twenty years of history.
Militia leader, populist, unpredictable.
His movement boycotted parliament not long ago and then came back.
He's essentially the wild card in every single Iraqi political calculation.
Y también es alguien que dice rechazar la influencia iraní, aunque su relación con Irán es mucho más complicada que eso.
And he's also someone who claims to reject Iranian influence, although his relationship with Iran is far more complicated than that.
Iraq tiene esa característica fascinante: casi todos los actores políticos importantes tienen posiciones ambiguas sobre Irán.
Iraq has this fascinating quality: almost every major political actor has an ambiguous position on Iran.
Ni completamente a favor ni completamente en contra.
Not fully for, not fully against.
That ambiguity is rational, though, isn't it.
You share a 1,400-kilometer border with Iran.
Your Shia pilgrimage sites are economically and spiritually intertwined.
You can't just pretend Tehran doesn't exist, whatever Washington wants.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y eso es lo que hace tan difícil la posición iraquí ahora mismo.
And that's what makes Iraq's position so difficult right now.
Hay una guerra activa entre Irán y Estados Unidos, y Iraq está literalmente en el medio.
There's an active war between Iran and the United States, and Iraq is literally in the middle.
No quiere que la usen como campo de batalla.
It doesn't want to be used as a battlefield.
No quiere elegir un bando.
It doesn't want to choose a side.
Pero nombrar a un primer ministro en este momento es, inevitablemente, enviar una señal.
But naming a prime minister at this moment is, inevitably, sending a signal.
Let's talk about al-Zaidi then.
Who is he, what do we know, and what does his selection signal?
Al-Zaidi es un político relativamente joven para los estándares iraquíes, con experiencia en ministerios técnicos.
Al-Zaidi is a relatively young politician by Iraqi standards, with experience in technical ministries.
No es una figura de primer plano con el bagaje de Maliki ni con la polarización de Sudani.
He's not a frontline figure carrying Maliki's baggage or Sudani's divisiveness.
Eso puede ser tanto su mayor ventaja como su mayor debilidad.
That may be both his greatest advantage and his greatest weakness.
Unknown quantities can move in either direction.
He could be genuinely capable and use the obscurity to his advantage, or he could be a compromise candidate who gets eaten alive by the established factions the moment he tries to do something.
En Iraq, la historia reciente sugiere que los primeros ministros tienen menos poder del que parece en el papel.
In Iraq, recent history suggests prime ministers have less power than they appear to on paper.
Las milicias tienen sus propias cadenas de mando.
The militias have their own chains of command.
Los ministerios más importantes están controlados por partidos que negocian su lealtad.
The most important ministries are controlled by parties that negotiate their loyalty.
Gobernar Iraq de verdad es como intentar dirigir una orquesta en la que la mitad de los músicos obedecen a directores diferentes.
Actually governing Iraq is like trying to conduct an orchestra where half the musicians answer to different conductors.
That image is going to stay with me.
And it points to something structural, not just personal.
The muhasasa system itself might be the problem, not just the individual leaders who operate within it.
Hay muchos iraquíes que piensan exactamente eso.
Many Iraqis think exactly that.
Las protestas de 2019, el movimiento Tishreen, fueron en parte una rebelión contra el sistema sectario completo.
The 2019 protests, the Tishreen movement, were partly a rebellion against the entire sectarian system.
Los jóvenes iraquíes salieron a la calle diciendo que no querían ser chiítas o sunníes o kurdos en política, querían ser ciudadanos.
Young Iraqis took to the streets saying they didn't want to be Shia or Sunni or Kurdish in politics, they wanted to be citizens.
And those protests were met with live fire.
Hundreds killed.
The movement was eventually suppressed, though it did produce some political change.
But the system survived more or less intact.
Which says something about how entrenched it is.
El sistema tiene muchos beneficiarios.
The system has many beneficiaries.
Los partidos que controlan los ministerios extraen recursos del estado, distribuyen empleos, construyen lealtades.
The parties that control ministries extract resources from the state, distribute jobs, build loyalties.
Es una red clientelar enorme.
It's an enormous patronage network.
Para desmantelarla necesitarías una voluntad política que ningún primer ministro ha tenido todavía, porque todos llegan al poder gracias a esa misma red.
To dismantle it you'd need political will that no prime minister has had yet, because they all reach power thanks to that very same network.
The trap of legitimacy through the system that you'd need to reform.
You can't get the power to change it without first being shaped by it.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y mientras tanto, Iraq tiene una economía enorme potencialmente, porque tiene muchísimo petróleo, pero sigue siendo un país donde los servicios básicos fallan, donde la corrupción es sistémica, donde los jóvenes emigran porque no ven futuro.
And meanwhile, Iraq has an enormous potential economy, because it has enormous oil reserves, but it remains a country where basic services fail, where corruption is systemic, where young people emigrate because they see no future.
El petróleo financia al sistema, pero no financia al ciudadano.
Oil finances the system, but doesn't finance the citizen.
Iraq is the fourth largest oil producer in OPEC.
That is a staggering amount of revenue.
And the contrast with the infrastructure, with the electricity blackouts, with the hospitals, is genuinely hard to explain unless you understand where the money actually goes.
Va a mantener el sistema.
It goes to maintaining the system.
Va a los partidos, a las milicias, a las redes clientelares.
It goes to parties, militias, patronage networks.
Iraq es un ejemplo extremo de lo que los economistas llaman la maldición de los recursos: cuando un estado puede financiarse con petróleo, no necesita desarrollar una relación productiva con sus ciudadanos.
Iraq is an extreme example of what economists call the resource curse: when a state can finance itself through oil, it doesn't need to develop a productive relationship with its citizens.
No tax, no accountability.
The compact between government and governed breaks down when the government doesn't need anything from the people.
I've seen versions of that in Nigeria, in Angola, in Venezuela.
Iraq is a particularly acute case.
Y lo que hace que este nombramiento sea importante es precisamente eso.
And what makes this appointment important is precisely that.
Al-Zaidi tiene que navegar todo esto, la presión iraní, la presencia americana, las milicias, los kurdos, los sunníes, la corrupción, y tiene que hacerlo en un momento en que la región está en guerra.
Al-Zaidi has to navigate all of this, the Iranian pressure, the American presence, the militias, the Kurds, the Sunnis, the corruption, and he has to do it at a moment when the region is at war.
Es una tarea casi imposible.
It's an almost impossible task.
Almost impossible doesn't mean completely impossible.
But the history of Iraqi prime ministers suggests you need either extraordinary political skill, extraordinary luck, or preferably both.
Mira, lo que me parece significativo es esto: que Maliki y Sudani se retiraron antes de que hubiera una votación.
Look, what strikes me as significant is this: Maliki and Sudani withdrew before there was a vote.
Eso sugiere que alguien, o algo, les convenció de que no era su momento.
That suggests someone, or something, persuaded them it wasn't their moment.
En Iraq eso normalmente significa presión iraní.
In Iraq that normally means Iranian pressure.
Irán no quería a ninguno de los dos ahora mismo.
Iran didn't want either of them right now.
So al-Zaidi isn't just a compromise candidate among Iraqis.
He might be Tehran's preferred candidate for this particular moment in a conflict that directly involves Iran.
Es una hipótesis muy razonable.
It's a very reasonable hypothesis.
Irán quiere un Iraq estable pero manejable.
Iran wants an Iraq that's stable but manageable.
No quiere un primer ministro que provoque a Estados Unidos ni uno que cause problemas internos.
It doesn't want a prime minister who provokes the United States or one who causes internal problems.
Al-Zaidi, como figura menos conocida y menos polarizadora, puede ser útil precisamente porque no tiene un perfil definido todavía.
Al-Zaidi, as a less well-known and less polarizing figure, may be useful precisely because he doesn't have a defined profile yet.
The blank slate as strategic asset.
For now.
Until the expectations hit him.
Oye, Fletcher, hay algo que me llamó la atención en tu español antes.
Hey, Fletcher, something you said in your Spanish earlier caught my attention.
Cuando dijiste que querías que los oyentes entendieran algo, usaste una construcción en inglés, pero en español habrías necesitado el subjuntivo.
When you said you wanted listeners to understand something, you used an English construction, but in Spanish you'd need the subjunctive.
Quiero que los oyentes entiendan, no quiero que los oyentes entienden.
'Quiero que los oyentes entiendan,' not 'quiero que los oyentes entienden.' Do you see it?
¿Lo ves?
The subjunctive.
My old nemesis.
So it's not 'entienden,' present indicative, it's 'entiendan,' which is the subjunctive form.
And that kicks in because of the 'quiero que' construction.
Exacto.
Exactly.
En español, cuando expresas un deseo sobre lo que hace otra persona, necesitas el subjuntivo.
In Spanish, when you express a wish about what another person does, you need the subjunctive.
'Quiero que vengas.' 'Es importante que sepas esto.' 'Espero que tengan éxito.' El verbo principal expresa un deseo o necesidad, y el segundo verbo va en subjuntivo.
'I want you to come.' 'It's important that you know this.' 'I hope they succeed.' The main verb expresses a wish or need, and the second verb goes into the subjunctive.
And in English we mostly dodge this entirely.
'I want you to come' just sounds normal.
We don't have a separate subjunctive form that listeners would even notice.
Spanish forces you to be explicit about the fact that you're in the territory of desire, not fact.
Eso es una forma muy buena de verlo, en realidad.
That's actually a very good way to put it.
El subjuntivo marca la diferencia entre lo real y lo deseado.
The subjunctive marks the difference between the real and the desired.
'Sé que viene' es un hecho.
'I know he's coming' is a fact.
'Quiero que venga' es un deseo.
'I want him to come' is a wish.
La gramática refleja esa distinción filosófica.
The grammar reflects that philosophical distinction.
Me gusta que lo hayas dicho así.
I like that you put it that way.
High praise from a man who has edited El País.
I'll take it.
And look, that distinction, real versus desired, feels uncomfortably appropriate for an episode about Iraq.
What the country is, and what everyone wishes it would be, have been in conflict for twenty years.