As the campaign to retake Mosul from the Islamic State grinds on, a political battle is winding down about 400 kilometers (roughly 250 miles) south in Baghdad. After repeated delays and much debate, Iraq's parliament passed its 2017 budget on Dec. 7. Although the worst of that struggle is now over, the issues that drove it remain. Facing another year of scant oil revenue, the Iraqi government will encounter an array of familiar challenges in 2017, but its focus will stay firmly fixed on the fight against the Islamic State. Another Year of Austerity Baghdad is caught between a rock and a hard place where its budget is concerned. Discontent is growing among the Iraqi people after years of austerity measures, but between stagnant oil prices and the conditions of Iraq's World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans, there is no end in sight to the spending cuts.