Reflections on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war commonly refer to three decisions taken by the United States and its allies during the immediate post-war period that are widely regarded as catastrophic errors: the purge of Baath party loyalists from state institutions, referred to as “de-Baathification”; the dissolution of the Iraqi army, which precipitated a significant security vacuum; and the enforcement of a new power-sharing formula along ethnosectarian lines, commonly referred to in Arabic as “al-muhasasa al-ta’ifiya”.
Muhasasa is widely decried as emblematic of a broken political system that spawned a sectarian civil war and entrenched endemic corruption and dysfunctional governance.
