Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Twenty years after Saddam Hussein was hanged, Iraq remains mired in corruption, sectarianism, and repression, particularly towards Kurdish citizens and women, writes Denis MacShane.
The hope that the 2003 US-UK invasion would bring democracy and the rule of law has long faded. One woman’s story reveals just how far Iraq still has to go.
Sara Saleem, a dual US-Iraqi national and successful Kurdish businesswoman, was leading a $multi-million housing development in Basra in 2014. On returning to Iraq to inspect the project, she was kidnapped by men allegedly linked to then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Her offence? Refusing to pay a £2 million “donation” to his re-election campaign.
Held for 43 days, Saleem was beaten and threatened with dismemberment. “They cursed me and said many vulgar things about the Kurds,” she later recalled. Upon returning to Virginia, she was met by FBI agents who reportedly confirmed Maliki’s involvement.
Now, Saleem is suing Maliki and Iraq’s top judge, Faiq Zidan, for $2 billion in a US federal court under anti-terrorism and torture victim protection laws. She accuses Zidan of helping to cover up the crime and using the judiciary to harass her.
Her case is far from unique. It lays bare the heart of Iraq’s enduring dysfunction: a judiciary captured by political and sectarian interests, particularly Iranian ones. Zidan, head of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, wields more power than the nominal Prime Minister.
Aligned with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, he has endorsed extra-judicial killings and political detentions. He is also openly hostile to Iraq’s Kurds, dismantling their constitutional court, withholding salaries, and blocking their legal autonomy.
A report from the London School of Economics documents Zidan’s corruption and manipulation of Iraq’s legal system.Yet in November 2024, he was welcomed in London with official hospitality to sign a judicial cooperation agreement with the UK government. He even dangled the prospect of taking back some Iraqi asylum seekers, an offer the Labour government hopes will burnish its credentials on migration.
The warm reception in London rang alarm bells elsewhere. Zidan is a highly controversial figure in Washington. In June 2024, former US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, then in Congress, introduced legislation to designate Zidan and his council as Iranian-controlled operatives.
Iraq’s politics remain deeply sectarian. The Shia-Sunni divide, long a source ofconflict, still defines power dynamics, and with two-thirds of the country’s population being Shia, Iran exerts huge influence. Meanwhile, the Kurdish minority, comprising15–20% of Iraq’s population, continues to face institutional discrimination.
Saleem’s ordeal illustrates how little progress has been made since Saddam’s fall.Iraq holds elections, but they’re widely seen as corrupt. Iraqi elections are a facade, says journalist Haider al-Musawi – a performance used to redistribute influence among elites.
Incredibly, Saleem returned to Iraq in 2017 to continue her housing project, only to be arrested again, this time on what she says were trumped-up charges. According to her court filing, the legal harassment has continued, orchestrated by Zidan and others in power.
British taxpayers are now footing the bill for a £12 billion UK-Iraq trade deal, signed earlier this year during Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. Among the projects? Infrastructure upgrades in Basra – the very city where Saleem was kidnapped and tortured.
To add to the farce, Sudani himself was recently accused of placing a wiretap on Zidan. Yet at the top levels of Iraqi Shia politics, such allegations rarely lead to real investigations.
While Zidan shakes hands with British ministers, Saleem continues her battle from Virginia. Her case, brought under the US Anti-Terrorism Act and Torture Victim Protection Act, may be one of the few paths left for a victim of Iraqi judicial abuse tofind justice.
It will also test the West’s resolve. Can the UK and its allies continue to work with officials so clearly compromised? Can women and minorities like the Kurds ever expect justice in a system built to marginalise them?
Zidan remains a guest of the British establishment. He has met Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer, and even Baroness Emma Nicholson, chair of the Iraq-UK Business Council. That such a figure is feted by British officials while being denounced by US lawmakers and sued in American courts is a stark contradiction.
Sara Saleem’s courage is a reminder that beneath the gloss of diplomatic progress lies the enduring failure of Iraq’s governing system, and the high human cost for those who challenge it.
Two decades after Saddam’s fall, Iraq still lacks an independent judiciary, free media, suppresses its Kurdish citizens, treats women as second-class, and operates under the shadow of Iranian influence. For all the trade deals and photoopportunities, it remains, in critical ways, unreformed.
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The Author, Denis MacShane, is a former UK Minister of State and MP who worked for eight years under Tony Blair in the UK Foreign Office.
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