The Constitution of Iraq — Written in 90 Days While the Country Was Still at War
Iraq — Constitution Profile
| 📅 Active Since | December 28, 2005 |
| 🏛️ Government | Federal Parliamentary Republic |
| 🌍 Capital | Baghdad |
| 📄 Constitution Number | 6th since 1925 |
| ✍️ Drafted Under | US-led occupation, 2005 |
| 🗳️ Referendum Result | 79% approved |
The Constitution Written While the Country Was Still Burning
By the summer of 2005, Iraq was barely two years removed from the fall of Saddam Hussein. Insurgent attacks were a daily occurrence. The country had no functioning government in the modern sense — only an American-led occupation trying to hand power back to a population it had only just invaded.
And in the middle of all of it, Iraqi lawmakers were handed an impossible deadline.
The occupying power was determined to show the world, as well as the growing Iraqi resistance, that it intended to establish democracy in Iraq by the end of 2005. It was also obvious that the US was planning an early exit.
A permanent constitution — for a multiethnic, war-torn nation that had never experienced genuine democracy — needed to be finished in months, not years.
The Referendum Held in the Middle of an Insurgency
Despite the chaos, Iraq did something extraordinary. On 15 October 2005, a national referendum approved a new constitution by a majority of 79 percent of the votes.
Millions of Iraqis — Shi'a, Sunni, Kurd, men and women, young and old — walked to polling stations in a country still actively at war to vote on their own founding document.
It was published weeks later. It was published on December 28, 2005 in the Official Gazette of Iraq, in Arabic original, and thus came into force. Iraq officially had its sixth constitution since 1925.
The Deadline That Guaranteed a Flawed Document
Here is the part of Iraq's constitutional story that historians keep returning to.
The timeline was not chosen by Iraqis. It was imposed. The Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period stated the permanent constitution had to be approved no later than 15 October 2005. If it passed, elections for a permanent government would follow no later than December 31, 2005.
Some Iraqi politicians regarded this timetable as too quick, fearing it would result in an ill-considered constitution.
They were right to worry. In 2005, Iraqis approved the Constitution in a referendum, but they voted on an incomplete and badly written draft, not realising that the document would deepen Iraq's misery.
The Process That Left Out the People Who Needed a Voice Most
A constitution written for a deeply divided country needed buy-in from every major community. Iraq's process struggled to deliver that.
The choices made in Iraq's 2005 constitution have to be understood in the context of forced democratization by an occupying power and the outcome of the 2005 elections, which saw the triumph of parties with ambitions for regional hegemony.
According to constitutional scholars, the hasty way the Constitution was drafted, the many unhelpful external interventions, the absence of Iraqi constitutional expertise and the side-lining of Sunni Arab representation have all contributed to the precarious situation in Iraq in the subsequent years.
A document meant to unite Sunni, Shi'a, and Kurdish Iraqis under one federal framework was built without one of those three communities fully at the table.
The Preamble That Reads Like a War Memorial
Most constitutions open with dry legal language. Iraq's opens with grief.
Invoking the pains of sectarian oppression inflicted by the autocratic clique and inspired by the tragedies of Iraq's martyrs, Shiite and Sunni, Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen, and recollecting the darkness of the ravage of the holy cities... burnt by the flames of grief of the mass graves, the marshes, Al-Dujail and others, and articulating the sufferings of racial oppression in the massacres of Halabja, Barzan, Anfal.
It is one of the most emotionally raw constitutional preambles ever written — a document that begins not with a vision for the future, but with a list of the atrocities its people were determined to never let happen again.
A Constitution Built for Compromise — Amendable by Design
Recognizing that the document was rushed and imperfect, its own drafters built in a mechanism to fix it later.
In pursuance of the agreement with the Sunnis in the passing of the constitutional referendum in 2005, a constitutional commission was also created in 2006 to oversee the amendment process.
It was, in effect, an admission baked into the constitution itself — this document is not finished, and we know it.
Nearly two decades later, many of those promised amendments still have not happened.
Ten Years Later — The Verdict Was Brutal
By 2013, legal scholars who had watched Iraq's experiment unfold delivered a harsh assessment.
Ten years after the US invasion, and following three rounds of elections, Iraq is one of the most dangerous, unstable and corrupt countries in the world. It is clear that the ill-conceived US experiment to remake Iraq has failed. The deep structural, legal and political failings of the Iraqi Constitution, for which both US officials and Iraqi politicians bear responsibility, have contributed greatly to this failure.
It remains one of the most studied case examples in modern constitutional law — a cautionary tale of what happens when nation-building, foreign occupation, and an impossible deadline collide in the writing of a single document.
Constitution at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| First Iraqi Constitution | 1925 — under British occupation |
| Current Constitution Drafted | 2005 |
| Approved by Referendum | October 15, 2005 — 79% in favor |
| Published / In Force | December 28, 2005 |
| Constitutions Since 1925 | 6 (1925, 1958, 1964, 1968, 1970, 2005) |
| Government Type | Federal Parliamentary Republic |
| Official Languages | Arabic and Kurdish |
| Population (approx.) | Over 30 million |
| Amendment Commission | Created 2006 |
📥 Read the Constitution of Iraq
Read the complete, official English text of the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq:
👉 Read Constitution of Iraq — Full Text
Written under foreign occupation. Approved during an active insurgency. A preamble that reads like a war memorial. Which part of Iraq's constitutional story surprised you the most? Tell us in the comments below.
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