The state, sovereignty and strategic decision-making

Law as part of national security: why does selective enforcement weaken the state?

By Ali Zuweid · Article date: 26 October 2026 · 9 min read

English translation published 31 October 2026. Read the Arabic original.

In June 2026, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council and the United Nations Development Programme discussed a draft report monitoring major corruption trials, covering 170 cases between August 2024 and July 2025. The discussion examined evidence quality and procedural safeguards; it was not an announcement of new convictions. That distinction matters. A state’s legal capacity cannot be measured simply by the number of people detained, but by its ability to take a case from suspicion to a judgment whose fairness can be defended. Source: UNDP, 21 June 2026.

This review places an apparently judicial matter at the centre of national security. When law is predictable for the powerless but negotiable for the influential, citizens, officials and investors face a different calculation: does complying with a rule protect them better than approaching someone who can suspend it? The trial sample does not establish the extent of selective enforcement in Iraq. It nevertheless offers a more serious starting point than competing accusations for examining how evidence is constructed and decisions are made. The task is to explain how unequal enforcement affects state capacity, then identify what can be corrected and measured without turning courts into instruments of a political campaign.

Selectivity changes the value of protection

Article 14 of Iraq’s Constitution establishes equality before the law. Article 15 subjects restrictions on liberty to a competent judicial decision, while Article 19 establishes judicial independence and the presumption of innocence. These safeguards are integral to maintaining security: they define who may exercise coercion and under what conditions it cannot become a private privilege. Circumventing procedure is therefore no victory for the state merely because the person targeted is unpopular or the allegation serious. A rule allowing a safeguard to be suspended today can be used against someone else tomorrow. Iraq’s Constitution, Articles 14, 15 and 19.

Selective enforcement has a different effect from weak implementation alone. If an institution lacks investigators and delays similar files according to a stated criterion, the principal problem is capacity. If a case advances or stalls according to the connections of those involved, the practical rule becomes securing protection outside the institution. Compliance is then not necessarily rewarded, and misconduct does not necessarily carry a cost. This describes a possible mechanism, not a finding that every Iraqi delay results from political interference. Distinguishing resource shortages from interference requires tracking files and decisions rather than interpreting officials’ intentions.

The security consequences extend beyond the particular lawsuit. Someone who believes a complaint will be heard only through an intermediary may become more dependent on that intermediary in the next dispute. Whoever can obstruct accountability can offer protection as a political or social service. Behavioural regulation may consequently shift from a public institution to a private relationship. Law need not disappear for this to happen; its application merely has to become unpredictable. In my assessment, consistent enforcement can therefore address one source of demand for protection outside the state, although it cannot by itself eliminate the causes of uncontrolled weapons or inadequate services.

Deterrence requires a credible prospect of lawful accountability

A US National Institute of Justice synthesis finds that the certainty of being caught generally matters more for deterrence than increasing punishment severity. This synthesises crime research; it is not an experimental estimate for Iraqi corruption. Its value here is to test the familiar assumption that harsher legislation is sufficient to change behaviour. If an offender expects an influential connection to prevent an investigation from starting, a harsher penalty may change the calculation little. A credible prospect of consistent professional proceedings, however, changes the expected cost of misconduct before judgment is reached. National Institute of Justice: findings on deterrence.

That conclusion does not justify mass detention to demonstrate resolve. The relevant prospect is proper legal accountability, not exposure to an arbitrary decision. Increasing the number of weak cases can consume investigators’ and judges’ time, delay provable cases and encourage a quick confession instead of a sound evidentiary file. Acquittal is no security failure when it corrects an unsubstantiated accusation. Repeated defective referrals without institutional learning are a failure. Conviction rates should therefore be considered alongside the reasons for acquittal, evidence quality and detention periods, rather than making an increase in one percentage an independent objective.

This perspective gives the trial-monitoring workshop a further significance. Examining evidence and referrals does more than improve the court’s work: it can reveal where a case loses coherence as it moves between agencies. Yet a defect identified in one file cannot justify accusing an entire institution. Professional errors must be distinguished from deliberate obstruction, with a route to correct the former and hold the latter accountable. That distinction also protects conscientious staff. It is inconsistent to demand their professional independence while holding them politically responsible for every outcome that displeases an angry public.

Recovering funds is different from announcing punishment

On 27 June 2026, Iraq’s judiciary and UNDP launched a report examining criminal and civil approaches to recovering assets and public funds. This highlights a practical difference between punishing an offender and returning a public resource to society. The launch establishes no amount actually recovered, and money located, money frozen and money returned must not be conflated. It does, however, show why evaluating anti-corruption requires following the money’s eventual disposition as well as the defendant’s. Launch of the Iraq asset-recovery report.

For Iraq, this means establishing a clear chain of responsibility for documents, assets and decisions while respecting rights and avenues of appeal. A campaign may appear successful in the media while ownership remains disputed or an asset loses value under management. Conversely, a carefully achieved recovery may attract less attention but deliver greater financial benefit. This is not a legal judgment on a particular case. I propose a public-policy test: what actually returned, at what cost and over what period, and what prevented the institutional weakness that enabled its loss from recurring? Answering only one of those questions is insufficient to close the institutional file.

The limits of the American deterrence comparison become apparent here. Research distinguishing apprehension probability from punishment severity does not determine how to repair procurement records, nor can it independently address the overlap between political influence and administration. Punishment also serves purposes beyond deterrence, including justice and preventing the continuation of certain acts. The transferable lesson is narrower: before demanding harsher penalties, examine the distance between a legal provision and the prospect of its fair application. Iraq can test the effects of narrowing that distance on institutional behaviour; it cannot simply import effect sizes from a different legal and social environment.

Measuring consistency without putting people on trial through data

I propose a limited institutional review of one category of cases, selected by the judiciary and relevant authorities for its significance and the comparability of its files. The review would record referral dates, available evidence, reasons for postponement or closure, the duration of each stage and the final decision. It would compare files with similar complexity and circumstances, rather than raw totals across governorates. Greater delays in one location may reflect heavier workloads or missing expertise, not necessarily favouritism. An indicator should identify where a decision requires explanation and scrutiny; it should not issue an automatic accusation.

To prevent this review from becoming another instrument of pressure, personal data must remain protected. Aggregate findings should be released after removing material that identifies individuals or harms an investigation. Sensitive cases require access under defined legal powers, with a record of who consulted information and why—not publication of the names of defendants against whom no final judgment has been issued. Data correction also needs an established procedure. Incorrectly linking a name to a case may cause genuine deprivation even when it looks like a minor technical error on a screen. Consistency must encompass the rights of the person concerned as well as the official’s obligations.

Administratively, the findings could lead to specific changes: training where evidence repeatedly proves weak, reallocating staff where a bottleneck is documented, or referring proven interference through the appropriate legal process. The same remedy cannot sensibly cover all three situations. Reform becomes more credible when officials state what changed after a review, what remains unresolved and when measurement will be repeated. Publishing information then becomes a commitment others can follow, rather than another declaration of institutional integrity that citizens have no means of testing.

The political constraint remains. Influential actors may want rigorous enforcement against opponents and exemptions for allies, while the public may demand a quick result before the evidence is complete. Resisting both pressures requires stable institutional rules and protection for those working within them, alongside oversight that does not obstruct judicial independence. In my assessment, improvement begins when explaining an exception becomes harder than following a rule, and when citizens can identify the route of appeal without searching for an influential patron. This is a gradual objective that can be tested in defined procedures; it requires no unrealistic promise to abolish selectivity all at once.

The security produced by law is the ability to end a dispute through a public decision that can be justified, appealed and then enforced on known grounds. When the parties’ power determines the outcome in advance, the state spends its resources managing unequal power rather than limiting it. Reviewing a judicial file, however unremarkable it appears, may move Iraq towards the first condition—provided the review is judged by the procedural change it produces, rather than the headlines it generates.

Ali Zuweid — Researcher in strategic affairs and national security