Iraq: Security ministries agreed

After a month of wrangling, the Iraqi parliament approved the final members of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s new government on 18 October (see cabinet list, above). Though many of the faces in the new government are familiar, its establishment was widely viewed as a qualified success for Abadi, who had struggled in particular to get MPs to agree on the ministers of interior and defence. These two posts went eventually to Mohammad Salem Al-Ghabban, aligned with the Shiite Badr organisation, and Khalid Al-Obeidi, a Sunni former air force engineer from Mosul. One source who recently spoke to Abadi told GSN the prime minister had not had much room to manoeuvre, and felt thwarted in his attempts to bring in new faces.