Work on the US-Europe-Iraq Track II Dialogue began in Berlin in March 2020 and continued in remote venues through December 2020. Convened by the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Syria/Iraq Office with support from DT Institute, the dialogue brought together experts from the United States, Europe, and Iraq for a series of workshops to identify policies to help address Iraq’s political, socioeconomic, and security challenges. The attendees included a mix of former and current high-level officials and experts, all of whom are committed to a better future for Iraq.

Previous sessions identified specific interventions by Iraqi government, nongovernmental, and external actors that could improve the delivery of public services, reduce corruption, and improve security in Iraq. These prospective interventions focused on addressing an entrenched civil service, widespread corruption, and destabilizing militia activity, all of which combined to impose critical barriers to Iraq’s recovery. Based on their long-standing expertise, dialogue participants recommended pursuing measures to improve civil-service competence, mobilize youth, decentralize government services, implement e-governance capabilities, and facilitate militia integration in a manner that strengthens and legitimizes state institutions. 

Building upon these early sessions, the Track II Dialogue’s experts took up ways to design these proposed interventions in a second round of meetings. The first of these four meetings centered on identifying and prioritizing measures to address Iraq’s major challenges. The second and third meetings focused on refining recommendations into actionable policies and identifying the actors, acts, and conditions necessary for their implementation. The fourth meeting refined the implementation plan and developed a roadmap that accounts for how the measures and other interventions, in combination, will help take Iraq from its current state to one of relative stability and prosperity. 

This report presents findings and recommendations intended to assist the government of Iraq and its international partners in improving political, social, economic, and security conditions in order to enhance national stability, stabilize Iraq’s democratic processes, and promote broad-based, Iraqi-generated economic growth. These findings and recommendations are drawn from two years of engagement with the dialogue’s community of experts on Iraq, and responses from more than two dozen Iraqi political, economic, and security leaders to surveys conducted in mid-2021.

The overarching theme that came out of these recent discussions is that Iraqis—individually, as groups, and, perhaps more importantly, as members of social networks—are locked in a situation where there is no obvious way to facilitate the collective Iraqi interest without sacrificing their interests. Put another way, progress in Iraq generally means someone loses, and those who lose have interest in undermining the progress that comes at their expense. Sometimes they resort to violence. For this reason, efforts to directly confront corruption and instability, and to promote economic development, typically fail. The best way forward is to gain a better understanding of those interests and how they interact, and then set conditions so that individual and group interests are preserved while advancing larger, national interests.