As charge d’affaires of the United States embassy in Iraq some years ago, I shocked US and Iraqi officials when I said the US Federal Reserve should end the shipment of US banknotes resulting from Iraq’s oil sales and replace them within three years with digital transfers. As shocking as that was then, it is now the case that 95 percent of dollar transfers to Iraq are digital. This initiative certainly helped bring the Iraqi banking sector closer to international standards, but it had a more important goal: to make corruption harder than simply passing someone a handful of “shayeb”, Iraqi slang for $100 bills.

But in Iraq, corruption is so pervasive that no single initiative or action will eliminate it, so new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s high-profile arrests of 47 officials, lawmakers and politicians on Sunday needs to be the first step in a years-long campaign if it is to make a significant difference to the lives of ordinary Iraqis. These particular arrests appear to be the result of an investigation into the Ministry of Oil’s undersecretary for refining affairs, Adnan al-Jumaili, and include about a dozen members of parliament whose immunity was lifted. After many years working in and on Iraq, it would not surprise me if the investigation exposed links between these politicians, their political backers and the Ministry of Oil. Because of Iraq’s ethnosectarian power-sharing model in place since 2003, ministries are seen as money........

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