Iraq: New government says it won’t bring back conscription

Iraq’s new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, announced today that he will not reinstate conscription, satisfying a large section of public opinion that considers such a measure unnecessary.

Military service became compulsory in Iraq in 1935 and the measure was revoked in 2003 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Subsequently, the Iraqi army was disbanded by the US transitional administration in Baghdad.

In August 2021, the previous Iraqi government brought forward a bill to reinstate conscription. But the country plunged once again into a political crisis, and the parliament that emerged from the October 2021 elections was unable to make any major decisions.

Some bills “have been withdrawn (…) because they are not in line with the government’s orientation,” Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who took over as Iraq’s prime minister last month, said today. Among the bills that were withdrawn was the one regarding military service.

The bill provided for compulsory conscription for all men aged 18-35, for a period of 3-18 months depending on educational level.

Many Iraqis expressed their opposition to the reinstatement of the measure, which, however, had little chance of being passed, according to parliamentary sources.

Former Minister of Electricity Luai al-Khatib had underlined in a post on Twitter that in a country where almost 4 out of 10 young people are unemployed, the creation of vocational training centers is more urgent than the restoration of conscription.

RES-EMP

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