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    Iraqi Parliament Approves New Government After Yearlong Delay

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    The installation of a new prime minister and cabinet ends a long-running political deadlock, but perpetuates a system plagued by corruption and dysfunction.Iraq’s Parliament approved a new government on Thursday that was more than a year in the making but that perpetuates an almost two-decade-old political system that has been blamed for endemic corruption and dysfunction since being ushered in after the U.S.-led invasion.The new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, presented his list of cabinet ministers to Parliament more than a year after elections last October that were meant to produce a new, reformist government in response to sweeping protests.The new government embodies a system put in place after the 2003 invasion, which allots key roles for specific sects and ethnic groups, and allocates government ministries to the most powerful political parties, which have routinely used those ministries to enrich themselves.The parties once again negotiated among themselves to divide up important posts, and once again Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, played a prominent role in the process. Lawmakers approved Mr. Sudani and his cabinet choices in a closed session.The new cabinet retains the Kurdish politician Fuad Hussein as foreign minister but replaces 16 of the 21 cabinet members named so far. At least two positions were left unfilled, including for the environment ministry, which would have a key role in combating climate change.The influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi nationalist who has resisted Iranian influence, emerged from elections last year with the biggest single bloc in Parliament. But after months of negotiations failed to form a coalition government, he ordered the resignation of his 73 members and in August announced he was withdrawing entirely from politics.Mr. Sadr’s withdrawal opened the way for a rival political bloc made up mostly of Iran-backed Shiite parties to take control in a coalition with Kurdish and Sunni political parties. The bloc includes Mr. Sadr’s archrival, Mr. Maliki, who was backed by the United States in his first term as prime minister, and was blamed in his second term for sectarian policies that fueled the rise of the Islamic State.Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, has remained a power broker within the Iraqi government.Hadi Mizban/Associated PressParliament earlier this month elected Abdul Latif Rashid as president, as part of a power-sharing agreement among the parties to make Mr. Sudani, a former human rights and labor minister, the new prime minister. That voting took place just after rockets targeted the green zone and central Baghdad, in a sign of Iraq’s continued security instability.On Thursday, as he presented his cabinet nominees to Parliament, Mr. Sudani pledged to fight corruption that has devastated the country, work to repair ties with the government of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, and build an economy that would create jobs and improve public services.“Corruption that has affected all aspects of life is more deadly than the corona pandemic and has been the cause of many economic problems, weakening the state’s authority, increasing poverty, unemployment and poor public services,” he told Parliament. He did not set out specific measures his government planned to take.Iraq has become one of the most corrupt and nontransparent countries in the world, according to independent watchdog groups. In the most recent scandal, $2.5 billion has gone missing from government funds in a scheme involving tax checks issued to companies submitting fake documents. The Interior Ministry this week said it had arrested a key suspect as he tried to flee the country.The endemic corruption and lack of basic public services and jobs sparked protests three years ago that led to the resignation of the government and the holding of early elections last year. Security forces that included Iran-backed militia fighters responded to the protests by killing hundreds of unarmed demonstrators.In Parliament on Thursday, one of the political leaders to emerge from the protest movement, Alaa al-Rikabi, was ejected from the session for disrupting proceedings by objecting to the system by which the ministers were chosen.Some analysts said Mr. Sudani stood little chance of carrying out the sweeping reforms he promised on Thursday.A photo released by the Iraqi government shows Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi on Thursday announcing the vote approving Iraq’s new government.Iraqi Parliament“At the end of the day, even if he’s 100 percent committed to fighting corruption, his constituency is not the Iraqis calling for anti-corruption, his constituency is the parties that put him in power,” said Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative program at Chatham House, a policy research center.Sajad Jiyad, an Iraq-based fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the cabinet, with some technocrats among the political appointees, might find it easier than the previous government to enact programs.Mr. Sudani, a former mayor and provincial governor in southern Iraq before he entered federal politics, is an experienced politician and a former member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party. Every previous prime minister since the U.S. invasion had lived in exile when Saddam Hussein held power and then had returned after he was toppled, but Mr. Sudani remained in Iraq.His predecessor as prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, is a former intelligence chief who took office in 2020 with a pledge to hold early elections, which took place last year. Mr. Sudani said he would also aim to hold elections within the next year.Although Mr. Sadr is not in government, he remains a potent political force with the power to mobilize supporters in the streets and create instability for any government. He has been clear that he expects early elections.“Having elections within a year is ambitious and obviously unlikely to happen, but I think that condition is in there as a way of placating Sadr,” said Mr. Jiyad.Nermeen al-Mufti and More

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      Fears of Wider Instability in Iraq After Attack on Prime Minister’s Home

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      Armed drones struck the Iraqi prime minister’s home in what was seen as a warning as Iranian-backed groups dispute the results of parliamentary elections.Iraq’s prime minister survived a drone strike on his home early Sunday, Iraqi officials said, raising fears of wider instability after disputed results in Iraq’s parliamentary elections.“I am fine, praise be to God, among my people, and I call for calm and restraint from everyone, for the sake of Iraq,” the prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi wrote on Twitter after the pre-dawn attack. In a video appealing for peace, he appeared with his wrist wrapped in what seemed to be a white gauze bandage.A senior official in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Saad Maan, said on state television that the prime minister’s house in the fortified Green Zone had been targeted by three armed drones.Mr. al-Kadhimi, right, with President Barham Salih of Iraq after the attack on Sunday. Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIraq’s president, Barham Salih, described the attack as a prelude to a coup, tweeting that “we cannot accept that Iraq will be dragged into chaos and a coup against its constitutional system.”On Friday, tensions over results of the Oct. 10 parliamentary elections came to a head after a clash outside the Green Zone — the site of the executed leader Saddam Hussein’s former palace grounds — where the U.S. Embassy and many other Western diplomatic missions are. Iraqi security forces used tear gas and live ammunition on militia members protesting the election results after the protesters tried to breach the heavily fortified zone’s barriers.A protest on Friday near an entrance to the Green Zone in Baghdad denouncing Mr. al-Kadhimi.Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLeaders of Iranian-backed militias — to which most of the protesters belong — have blamed Mr. al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s former intelligence chief, for the use of force that killed at least one person.Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the most powerful Iranian-backed militias, identified the person killed as Abdul Latif al-Khuwayldi, one of its brigade deputy commanders. The Iraqi Health Ministry said that more than 120 other people at the demonstration had been wounded, most of them security forces trying to hold back the protesters.Iraq’s election commission has yet to announce final results for the nationwide elections held almost a month ago as it wades through fraud accusations. The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has emerged as the biggest winner, at the expense of Iranian-backed parties that lost seats. Mr. al-Sadr, whose fighters battled American forces during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, is viewed as an Iraqi nationalist with an uneasy relationship with Iran.Political analysts believe those gains were mostly because of a more sophisticated strategy by the Sadrist organization, taking advantage of a new electoral system, which has an increased number of electoral districts. The United Nations, which had observers at the polls, praised the process. The political wings of the militia groups that lost seats claim they were defrauded.One of Mr. al-Kadhimi’s main goals has been to rein in Iranian-backed militias. After 2014, when many were created to fight ISIS, some of the biggest militias have been integrated into Iraq’s official security forces. Those militia forces, though, only nominally answer to the Iraqi government and some are blamed for continuing attacks on U.S. interests.No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack on Sunday on the prime minister’s residence.Iraqi security forces on Saturday outside an entrance to the the Green Zone.Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMost analysts saw the attack as a warning to Mr. al-Kadhimi and his allies rather than as an assassination attempt. The prime minister has remained in power by balancing Iraqi relations between Iran and the United States, and he is seeking another term.“What we’ve seen in the past is the use of violence, not necessarily to assassinate, but to warn that, ‘We’re here,’” said Renad Mansour, head of the Iraq Initiative at the think tank Chatham House. “I think this would also be a warning perhaps gone wrong because you can gain a bit more popularity and sympathy as the prime minister who survived an assassination attempt.”The attack, though, significantly complicates efforts to form a government. Such efforts rely on forging alliances among parties, some of them with armed wings, to form the biggest bloc in Parliament.An American State Department spokesman, Ned Price, called the strike on Sunday an “apparent act of terrorism” that was “directed at the heart of the Iraqi state.”Although Mr. al-Kadhimi said that both he and those who work with him were fine, the Iraqi military command said that several guards were being treated for injuries.Photographs released on state media of damage to the house showed cracked concrete steps, doors apparently blown off their hinges and what looked like shrapnel holes in the back of a parked vehicle.A photograph made available by a media office of the Iraqi government showed damage inside the home of Mr. al-Kadhimi after the drone attack on Sunday.Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office, via EPAMr. al-Sadr, whose movement has won the highest number of seats of any political bloc in Parliament, described the attack as an attempt to return the country to the control of “nonstate forces to make Iraq live under riots, violence and terrorism.”Iranian-backed groups that have previously threatened Mr. al-Kadhimi condemned the drone strikes.Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the militia group, which was among those that lost seats in the parliamentary elections, called the strikes an attempt to divert attention from the deadly clash outside the Green Zone on Friday and blamed foreign intelligence agencies.A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, expressed relief that the Iraqi prime minister had not been hurt in the attack. In a statement, Mr. Khatibzadeh blamed the strikes on an unspecified foreign plot.Abu Ali al-Askari, the nom de guerre of one of the leaders of Kitaib Hezbollah, a main Iranian-backed militia, accused Mr. al-Kadhimi of playing the role of a victim and said that no one in Iraq considered the Iraqi leader’s home worth losing a drone over.“If there is anyone who wants to harm this Facebook creature there are many ways that are less costly and more guaranteed to achieve this,” he said in a posting on his Telegram channel.While the attack has raised fears of growing instability amid Iraq’s political turmoil, the country’s citizens seemed to generally shrug it off. Later Sunday morning, the start of the Iraqi workweek, Baghdad streets were full of the normal rush-hour traffic jams.Near one of the entrances to the Green Zone, food vendors placed spatchcocked chickens to cook over charcoal grills on crowded sidewalks. Inside a butcher shop, a green parrot perched on a pole greeted customers by chirping out “meenoo” — “who is that” in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic.“We are used to these incidents,” said Ali al-Hussayni, 50, the shop owner, about the attack on Mr. al-Kadhimi. “I am not saying people are not scared at all, but we have seen far worse than this.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      In Iraq Election, Shiite Cleric Who Fought U.S. Strengthens Power

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      Results showed the party of Muqtada al-Sadr making the biggest gains in a vote that could help shape Iraq’s direction and its relationship with both the United States and Iran.BAGHDAD — Followers of a Shiite cleric whose fighters battled U.S. forces during the occupation made the biggest gains in Iraq’s parliamentary election, strengthening his hand in determining whether the country drifts further out of the American orbit.While independent candidates won some seats for the first time in a political landscape altered by anti-government protests, it became increasingly clear as ballots were tallied Monday that the big winner in the Sunday vote was Sairoun, the political movement loyal to the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.Sairoun won up to 20 additional seats in Parliament, consolidating its status as the single biggest bloc in the chamber and giving the mercurial cleric an even more decisive vote over the country’s next prime minister.The outcome could further complicate Iraq’s challenge in steering diplomatically between the United States and Iran, adversaries that both see Iraq as vital to their interests. Pro-Iranian militias have played an increased role in Iraq since the rise of the Islamic State in 2014 and have launched attacks on U.S. interests in the country.Mr. al-Sadr has navigated an uneasy relationship with Iran, where he has pursued his religious studies. Regarding the United States, he and his aides have refused to meet with American officials.He and the Iranian leadership shared similar goals when his fighters fought U.S. forces after 2003. But Mr. Sadr is viewed as an Iraqi nationalist, an identity that has sometimes put him in conflict with Iran — a country he cannot afford to antagonize.In a speech Monday night, Mr. al-Sadr said all embassies are welcome in Iraq as long as they do not interfere in Iraqi affairs or the formation of a government. The cleric also implicitly criticized the Iran-backed militias, some of which refer to themselves as “the resistance.”“Even if those who claim resistance or such, it is time for the people to live in peace, without occupation, terrorism, militias and kidnapping,” he said in an address broadcast on state TV. “Today is the victory day of the people against the occupation, normalization, militias, poverty, and slavery,” he said, in an apparent reference to normalizing ties with Israel.“He is using some sharp language against Iran and the resistance groups affiliated with Iran,” said Gheis Ghoreishi, a political analyst who has advised Iran’s foreign ministry on Iraq, speaking about Mr. Sadr’s victory speech in Clubhouse, an online discussion group. “There is a real lack of trust and grievances between Sadr and Iran.”In Baghdad Monday night, young men jammed into pickup trucks, waving flags, playing celebratory songs and carrying photos of Mr. Sadr as they cruised the streets of the capital.The election authorities announced preliminary results Monday evening with official results expected later this week. With 94 percent of the vote counted, election officials said the turnout was 41 percent — a record low that reflected a deep disdain by Iraqis toward politicians and government leaders who have made Iraq one of the most corrupt countries in the world.Election officials counting ballots at a polling station in Baghdad on Sunday.Thaier Al-Sudani/ReutersActivists who were part of anti-government protests that brought down the Iraqi government in 2019 won up to a dozen seats, running for the first time in this election, which was called a year early to answer demands for changes in Iraq’s political system.That system, in which senior government posts are divided by political leaders along sectarian and ethnic lines, remains unchanged. But a new electoral law loosened the stranglehold of large political blocs and made it easier for independent candidates and smaller parties to win seats.The preliminary results also showed that the political bloc headed by former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki appeared to be the second biggest winner while parties tied to pro-Iranian militias lost ground.Mr. al-Maliki, a Shiite, gained wide support for having sent Iraqi government troops to break the militias’ hold on Iraq’s southern city of Basra in 2008. But he was later blamed for a descent into sectarianism that helped foster the rise of the Islamic State. But it was the Sadrists who were the clear winners on Sunday.“Of course I voted for the Sadrist bloc,” said Haider Tahseen Ali, 20, standing outside the small grocery where he works in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad neighborhood and a bastion of Mr. al-Sadr’s base. Mr. al-Sadr has assumed the religious legacy of his revered father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1999.“Even if he ordered us to throw ourselves from the roofs of our houses, I would throw myself,” said Abbas Radhi, an election worker overseeing one of the Sadr City polling stations, referring to Mr. al-Sadr.The cleric declared twice in the run-up to the vote that he was withdrawing his movement from the election process before reversing and declaring that the next prime minister should come from the Sadrist ranks. But Mr. al-Sadr appears open to negotiation about who should lead Iraq.Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, an independent who has tried to balance Iraq’s relations between the United States and Iran, and has made clear he wants to be prime minister again, will need Sadrist support.Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in Baghdad on Sunday after casting his ballot.Ahmed Saad/ReutersWhile Shiite parties dominate Iraqi politics, the biggest Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, along with a Sunni faction headed by the Parliament speaker, Mohamed al-Halbousi, also emerged with enough seats to play a role in deciding the next prime minister.The low turnout was a reflection of the disdain for Iraqi politicians, particularly among young voters who are faced with a future that offers few opportunities. Sixty percent of Iraq’s population is under the age of 25.“Clearly, people are still disillusioned even more with the political parties and the political process,” said Farhad Alaaldin, head of the Iraq Advisory Council, a research group in Baghdad. “People don’t believe that this election would bring about change, and that’s why they didn’t bother to turn out to vote.”The disillusionment extends from a deeply corrupt and dysfunctional government to the parliamentarians themselves. President Barham Salih has said an estimated $150 billion obtained through corruption has been smuggled out of Iraq since 2003. The organization of the election, with new biometric voting cards and electronic transmission systems designed to deter widespread fraud seen in previous elections, was declared by international observers to have met international criteria.But some organizations that had deployed observers during the voting cautioned that the low turnout meant a limited public mandate for the new government.“In the aftermath of the elections, the low turnout may cause questions as to the legitimacy of the government,” said Sarah Hepp, the director of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a German-government funded political foundation. The protest movement two years ago spread from the south of Iraq to Baghdad when thousands of young people took to the streets to demand jobs, public services and an end to a corrupt political system.A demonstration in Baghdad earlier this month to commemorate slain activists.Andrea DiCenzo for The New York TimesIn a challenge to neighboring Iran, they also demanded an end to Iranian influence in Iraq. Iran’s proxy militias have become part of Iraq’s official security forces but in many cases do not answer to the Iraqi government and are blamed for assassinations and disappearances for which they are never held accountable.Security forces and militia members killed more than 600 unarmed protesters since the October 2019 demonstrations, according to human rights groups.One of the leading protest candidates, Alaa al-Rikabi, easily won a seat in the southern city of Nasiriya. Mr. al-Rikabi has said the movement’s main goal was to shift protests from the streets to Parliament, where he said he and some of the other new lawmakers would demand change.“My people have not enough hospitals, not enough health care services. Many of my people are below the poverty line,” he said in an interview in August. “Most of them say they cannot feed their children, they cannot educate their sons and daughters.”Jaafar al-Waely, Falih Hassan and Nermeen al-Mufti contributed reporting from Baghdad. Farnaz Fassihi contributed from New York. More

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      In Iraqi Elections, Guns and Money Still Dominate Politics

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      Iraqis vote Sunday in parliamentary elections called a year early, after huge anti-government protests. Most parties are appealing to voters on the basis of religious, ethnic or tribal loyalty.BAGHDAD — Outside the headquarters of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the main Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, fighters have posted a giant banner showing the U.S. Capitol building swallowed up by red tents, symbols of a defining event in Shiite history.It’s election time in Iraq, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq — blamed for attacks on American forces and listed by the United States as a terrorist organization — is just one of the paramilitary factions whose political wings are likely to win Parliament seats in Sunday’s voting. The banner’s imagery of the 7th century Battle of Karbala and a contemporaneous quote pledging revenge sends a message to all who pass: militant defense of Shiite Islam.Seventeen years after the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator, the run-up to the country’s fifth general election highlights a political system dominated by guns and money, and still largely divided along sectarian and ethnic lines.The contest is likely to return the same main players to power, including a movement loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a coalition connected to militias backed by Iran, and the dominant Kurdish party in the semiautonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Other leading figures include a Sunni businessman under U.S. sanctions for corruption.A poster for the Sadrist Movement on display at the entrance to Sadr City, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. Posters for a candidate from another party hang nearby. Andrea DiCenzo for The New York TimesIn between are glimmers of hope that a reformed election law and a protest movement that prompted these elections a year early could bring some candidates who are not tied to traditional political parties into Iraq’s dysfunctional Parliament.But persuading disillusioned voters that it is worth casting their ballots will be a challenge in a country where corruption is so rampant that many government ministries are more focused on bribes than providing public services. Militias and their political wings are often seen as serving Iran’s interests more than Iraq’s.Almost no parties have put forth any political platforms. Instead they are appealing to voters on the basis of religious, ethnic or tribal loyalty.“I voted in the first elections and it did not meet our goals and then I voted in the second election and the same faces remained,” said Wissam Ali, walking along a downtown street carrying the bumper of a car he had just bought at a market. “The third time I decided not to vote.”Mr. Ali, from Babil province south of Baghdad, said he taught for the last 14 years in public schools as a temporary lecturer and has been unable to get a government teaching position because he does not belong to a political party.Anti-government protestors at a demonstration in Bagdad’s Tahrir Square this month commemorating activists killed by security forces and militia gunmen.Andrea DiCenzo for The New York TimesStarting in October 2019, protests intensified, sweeping through Baghdad and the southern provinces demanding jobs and basic public services such as electricity and clean water. The mostly young and mostly Shiite protesters demanded change in a political system where government ministries are awarded as prizes to the biggest political blocs.The protesters called for an end to Iranian influence in Iraq through proxy militias that now are officially part of Iraq’s security forces, but only nominally under government control.In response, security forces killed almost 600 unarmed protesters, according to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights. Other estimates place the toll at 800. Militia fighters are blamed for many of the deaths and are accused of killing dozens more activists in targeted assassinations.The current prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, came to power last year after the previous government was forced by the protests to step down.While early elections were a key campaign promise, Mr. Kadhimi has been unable to fulfill most of the rest of his pledges — bringing to justice those behind the killings of activists, making a serious dent in corruption and reining in Iranian-backed militias.While the parties already in power are expected to dominate the new Parliament, changes in Iraq’s electoral law will make it easier for small parties and independent candidates to be elected. That could make this vote the most representative in the country’s postwar history. Despite faults in the election process including, in previous years, widespread fraud, Iraq is still far ahead of most Arab countries in holding national and provincial polls.A poster for an independent candidate hung on the fence of a soccer field in Sadr City. Changes in election rules have made it easier for independent candidates to win seats. Andrea DiCenzo for The New York Times“It’s not a perfect system but it’s much better than the old one,” said Mohanad Adnan, an Iraqi political analyst.He said he believed the protests — and the bloody suppression of them — had resulted in some established parties losing part of their support. Some candidates are hoping to capitalize on a backlash against traditional political blocs.Fatin Muhi, a history professor at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, said she was encouraged by her students to run for office. Ms. Muhi, who is running with a party affiliated with the anti-government protests, said many people in her middle-class constituency had planned to boycott the elections but changed their minds.“When they found out we were candidates for the protest movement they said ‘we will give you our votes,’” Ms. Muhi said. “We will be an opposition bloc to any decision issued by corrupt political parties.”In addition to anger and apathy, serious fraud in the last parliamentary election has fueled the boycott campaign.To counter voter distrust that led to a record low turnout in the 2018 polls, election workers have been going to people’s doors in some neighborhoods with voter registration cards. Election authorities “wanted to make it as easy as possible for voters who don’t have trust in the system,” said Mr. Adnan, the political analyst. “They are not motivated to register or pick up their cards.”Customers at a cafe in Sadr City with the lights switched off. State electricity provides the cafe with only two hours of power at a time before it must rely on a generator.  Andrea DiCenzo for The New York TimesThe country’s 21 million registered voters include an estimated one million old enough to vote for the first time. Despite TikTok campaign spots and other tactics aimed at reaching young voters, many of them are boycotting the election.“Our country is for us and not for them,” said Helen Alaa, 19, referring to the political parties and the militias. Ms. Alaa, a first-year college student who said she would not vote, was at a demonstration commemorating slain protesters. “We tried so hard to explain to them but they always try to kill us. Now they try to calm down the situation so they can win in the election and bring back the same faces.”Ahmed Adnan, 19, said, “Every election there is a candidate who comes to a mosque near our house and promises to build schools and pave streets.” The candidate keeps being elected, he said, but none of those things have been done.To help support his family, Mr. Adnan, who is unrelated to Mohanad Adnan, works at a shop selling ice, making about $8 a day. He is trying to finish high school by studying at home and going in only to take exams.His friend, Sajad Fahil, 18, said a candidate came to his door and offered to buy his vote for $300.“Every election there is a candidate who comes to a mosque near our house and promises to build schools and pave streets,” said Ahmed Adnan, center. He wants to finish high school but needs to work to help support his family.Andrea DiCenzo for The New York Times“He refused to say which party he was running for,” said Mr. Fadhil, who studies at a technical institute and is also boycotting the vote.In some areas where there is more money and races are more hotly contested, the going price for buying a vote is up to $1,000, according to several tribal officials.Sheikh Hameed al-Shoka, head of the Anbar Tribal Leaders Council, said groups commissioned by some political blocs were buying up people’s biometric voting cards by the thousands. Under that scheme, voters agree to relinquish their cards and later retrieve them outside polling sites — ensuring that they actually do turn out — where they then vote as directed.In a race between the powerful Sunni speaker of Parliament, Mohammad al-Halbousi, and Iraqi businessman Khamis al-Khanjar, Sheikh Hammeed said he had told his followers to support Mr. Khanjar. The tribal leader said both political figures were suspected of corruption, including Mr. Khanjar whom he acknowledged having “corrupt friends.”“But his friends have worked in the government and offered something for people,” said the tribal leader. “The others did not offer anything. They only provided for themselves.”Fishing on the banks of the Tigris river in Baghdad.Andrea DiCenzo for The New York TimesFalah Hassan and Sura Ali contributed reporting from Baghdad. Nermeen al-Mufti contributed reporting from Kirkuk, Iraq. More