Bloody demonstrations have been taking place in Iraq since early October. Today, a bomb killed a driver and injured four passengers. On the 6th, there was also an assassination attempt on the president of the “Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq” in Basrah.
The demands are about the refusal of the return of the past regime. The democratic voice through elections has spoken, but the creation of a majority in the government that meets the expectations of Iraqis has failed. Iraq has been without an official government for almost a year now.
Before these recent events, bloody demonstrations took place in Iraq this summer, in which supporters of the Sadrist movement tried to put more pressure on politicians to create a new government. In the first invasion of the Green Zone on July 29, 60 protesters were killed. On August 29, 23 of the protesters were killed in street clashes, and 380 were injured. Fifteen protesters were shot and killed during the August 30 rallies, and 350 protesters were also injured – some by gunfire, others by tear gas. 38 demonstrators were killed, and 680 injured are the result of the two days of demonstrations on August 29 and 30.
In early October, the protests returned to the forefront, after a 40-day break related to Shiite religious celebrations. On the first day of Teshrin (October), Iraqis commemorate the beginning of the uprising for the “fall of the regime”, which dates back to 2019, but stopped because of the pandemic and especially the deadly repression that had killed nearly 600 and injured 30,000 at the time. On October 4, in Dhi Qar, a province in the An-Nasiriya region, a group of masked men took to the streets of the city to stage protests, and protesters set fire to a government building.
These protests are the result of the political vacuum in which Iraq has been living since October 2021, the date of the last elections, the winner of which could not gather a majority to form a coalition.
Back in time
Since October 2021, the Al Sadr movement has been struggling to create a coalition government after winning the last elections. Iranian-backed factions have begun to thwart Sadr’s efforts to form this government that includes his Kurdish and Sunni Arab allies but excludes groups Sadr describes as corrupt or pro-Tehran. Muqtada al-Sadr sought to resolve the crisis by ordering his deputies to withdraw from the Iraqi parliament last June, a move that helped free up dozens of seats for the coordination framework, which is one step closer to forming a government of its choice. Nouri al-Maliki, chairman of the Coordination Council, has suggested that he should be the next Iraqi prime minister, but Muqtada al-Sadr has rejected this proposal in both form and substance.
The government green zone in central Baghdad had been the scene of a street war on August 30, using medium weapons and mortar shells, while the militants had previously taken almost total control of large parts of the area, without the intervention of Iraqi forces.
Supporters of the Sadrist movement withdrew from the area, immediately after Sadr’s invitation to leave it within 60 minutes, and disavowed them; the Iraqi leader held a press conference, stating that “a revolt in it is not a revolution”, accusing “brazen militias to give orders of bullets”.
Iran is the most important element in the emergence of these protests, as it is helping to create and form a government that favors its interests and increases its influence in all political, economic, and even religious aspects of the country. This demonstration is in addition to the funding of Iranian-affiliated armed factions in Iraq to create chaos and trigger a civil war if the coordination framework is lost. Iran’s perspective on events in Iraq is to provide consultations through which it seeks to find intermediate solutions between the political parties. These solutions do not benefit the hopes of the Iraqi people.