Political Dismissals Law drains Iraq: $8.8B cost threatens state
Shafaq News
More than 260,000 Iraqis—including many who were not even born when Saddam Hussein’s regime ended in 2003—are currently receiving state salaries under the Political Dismissals Law No. 24 of 2005, a program originally designed to compensate victims of political persecution.
With over 125,000 applications still pending and annual costs exceeding 11 trillion dinars (approximately $8.4B), the Law has evolved into a financial and administrative quagmire, raising urgent questions about misuse, nepotism, and the erosion of merit-based governance.
The Law reinstates individuals dismissed for political, ethnic, or sectarian reasons during the period from July 17, 1968, to April 9, 2003. Article 1 outlines its scope: those who left their jobs due to migration or displacement outside Iraq; those arrested, detained, or imprisoned by the authorities of the former regime; those forced to discontinue studies at Iraqi universities; those unable to assume their appointed positions; and those referred to retirement before reaching the legal age.
The framework covers civilian, military, and internal security personnel and provides legal justification for including relatives up to the fourth degree in entitlement claims.
By the Numbers
Official data from the Politically Dismissed Persons’ Affairs at the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers highlights a steady expansion of state employment under the program. In March, 1,004 new appointments were recorded, followed by 569 retirements in June and 523 in August. July saw a notable surge with 1,900 new hires, while September and October added 1,100 and 1,000 appointments, respectively.
On average, around 1,300 people are hired each month, compared with roughly 500 retirees, meaning the inflow more than doubles the outflow. This pattern has produced a net increase of nearly 3,912 employees in 2025 alone, excluding the 125,000 pending cases, underscoring how the Law has steadily inflated the public payroll and contributed to institutional growth beyond initial projections.
Based on an average annual salary of 30 million IQD per employee (approximately $22,900), the cost for current and pending beneficiaries is roughly 11.55 trillion IQD annually (about $8.8 billion). Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani noted last year that salary expenditures had reached 90 trillion dinars (approximately $68.7 billion), up from 60 trillion, indicating that the state now spends more than one-third of its annual budget on wages.
Analysts emphasize that this surge surpasses combined spending on the Ministries of Health and Education, highlighting the disproportionate weight of political reinstatements. Political dismissals alone now account for over 15% of Iraq’s total recurrent expenditure.
Attempts by Shafaq News to obtain official commentary from government and parliamentary bodies proved unsuccessful. However, informal remarks from officials suggest that, with the parliamentary term drawing to a close, the issue may be deferred to the next legislature, while others linked the lack of public discussion to ongoing preparations for the upcoming November 11 parliamentary elections.
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Chaos Buys Jobs
Operating under the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, a special committee usually reviews claims and determines eligibility. Remarkably, even two decades later, the committee continues to accept applications, including from individuals born in the late 1980s who had never been employed before 2003.
An official at the Political Dismissals Directorate explained to Shafaq News that these applicants are not considered dismissed in the direct sense, “but they are included under the entitlement based on kinship up to the fourth degree with a politically dismissed relative, as permitted by Law.”
In early October, the head of the Martyrs Foundation met with the Political Dismissals Directorate to launch a new application form for relatives of martyrs up to the second degree. The move triggered backlash in online groups of dismissed employees.
“The former regime used to persecute families up to the fourth degree, and now entitlements are limited to only the first and second. Where is the justice?” Faleh Jassim from Wasit province wrote on Facebook.
Among the group members are young people in their thirties pursuing claims as “politically dismissed.” The highest concentrations of claimants are in Baghdad, Basra, and Wasit, suggesting political and administrative preference in certain regions.
The controversy extends to educational privileges. Beneficiaries receive exemptions from competency exams and preferential admission to postgraduate studies—measures that political analyst Ghaleb al-Daami criticized as “undermining educational standards.”
“Many files include people who are not eligible—some even used to persecute the dismissed during the former regime,” al-Daami indicated, citing documented cases where individuals accused of terrorism or other crimes were reinstated under the law.
He further noted that while the Law itself is legitimate, it has become a channel for wasting public money, “like many Iraqi laws tailored to political interests,” estimating that the real number of politically dismissed individuals is no more than a quarter of the total.
“The rest of the beneficiaries represent an administrative and a financial inflation that weakens state institutions,” he warned.
A knowledgeable source disclosed to our agency that some people previously dismissed for non-political reasons—including theft, sexual assault, or embezzlement— forged documents to reclassify their cases as political. Internal investigations revealed at least 200 cases where misclassified employees and forged kinship claims allowed ineligible individuals to regain government positions.
Crisis Gets Shield
“We reinstate around 4,000 people each year, appoint 6,000 new ones, and refer 3,000 to retirement,” a senior official at the Political Dismissals Directorate reported to Shafaq News, stressing that the Law clearly covers anyone who was sentenced or harmed, as well whose relatives up to the fourth degree were affected, for political, ethnic, or sectarian reasons.
He confirmed that hundreds of thousands of cases remain pending and that applications for martyrs’ relatives of the first and second degrees are still being accepted, cautioning that the directorate also issues rulings against those “who falsely claim political dismissal.”
Yet official data is not accompanied by detailed financial reports outlining salary costs or the funds allocated for new posts, leaving the file surrounded by questions.
In recent months, parliamentary committees have discussed reviewing the Law, but no session has been scheduled to debate its scope or cost. Quiet political support for keeping it in effect remains strong, as the parliamentary Committee for Martyrs, Victims, and Political Prisoners continues to advocate expanding eligibility and creating new positions rather than setting a clear deadline.
However, international watchdogs, including Chatham House, have highlighted in 2024 that politically motivated hiring is one of Iraq’s main corruption features, obstructing administrative reform and draining fiscal sustainability. Transparency International and the World Bank have likewise warned that unchecked reinstatement programs risk turning public employment into a political instrument rather than a service mechanism.
As Iraq’s wage bill continues to climb and new generations file claims under a Law rooted in the past, the question now confronting policymakers is not how to preserve justice for the genuinely wronged, but whether the state can afford to sustain a legacy that increasingly defines its present.
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.
