For months, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had denounced the corruption of the elites and young people’s unemployment. The movement had been both the repression and the pandemic.
Le Monde with AFP
Three years have passed and nothing has really changed. In an Iraq in full political impasse, thousands of demonstrators gathered on Saturday 1 er October in Baghdad to mark the third anniversary of an antipover uprising, launched against the corruption of the elites and the mismanagement of services audiences.
The unprecedented challenge, launched in October 2019, had spread to the mainly Shiite poor South. In this Iraq rich in petroleum, months for hundreds of thousands of demonstrators had beaten the pavement, denouncing young people unemployment, infrastructure in decay and lack of democracy. The movement was short of breath with a repression which had left nearly 600 dead and 30,000 injured, but also the confinement linked to the coronavirus.
Three years later, the situation has not changed. The same parties monopolize political life and, a year after the legislative elections of October 2021, they cannot agree on the choice of a Prime Minister and a President.
In the evening, the mobilization continued in Baghdad with lesser workforce, but also in the big cities of the South, Nassiriya and Bassora, where the protesters launched stones on the police, who replied with tear gas, according to a photographer from the France-Presse agency (AFP).
tensions around the appointment of a Prime Minister
“The people demand the fall of the regime”, chanted the thousands of demonstrators on Saturday, mostly very young, brandishing Iraqi flags and portraits of the “martyrs” of 2019 on the Tahrir square in Baghdad, according to a correspondent AFP. The police pulled several gap salvas to prevent the protesters from crossing a bridge, where concrete walls barred access to the green zone, a district housing Western Embassies and state institutions.
The two camps exchanged stone jets. Shirtless, young people wore an injured comrade to evacuate him from the first lines. The clashes in Baghdad made 36 injured in the demonstrators, suffering mainly from respiratory problems, and 18 in the ranks of the riot forces, according to an official at the Ministry of the Interior.
Commemorations intervene in a tense context, the two major poles of political Shiism compete on the appointment of a Prime Minister and anticipated legislative elections. The influential Shiite chef Moqtada Sadr calls for an immediate dissolution of the Parliament. Opposite, the coordination framework, an alliance bringing together pro-Iranian Shiite factions, wants the establishment of a government above all. On Wednesday, rocket fire had targeted the green area during a session of the parliament. 2> four in ten unemployed
On August 29, tensions had culminated when Sadr supporters had faced the army and men of the Hachd al-Chaabi, of ex-Iran-Iran-Iran-Iran-Iran-integrated troops, and who are politically opposed to the sadists . More than 30 sadist supporters died in these clashes.
Far too absorbed by intestine quarrels, politicians are powerless in the face of multiple crises that make Iraq vacillate. Among them, geopolitical tensions: Iran or Turkey, two big neighbors, episodically bomb the Kurdistan of Iraq to weaken armed – Iranian or Turkish opposition movements there. Wednesday, strikes claimed by Tehran left 14 dead and 58 injured.
After decades of conflicts, in the absence of economic reforms and major infrastructure projects in a country struck by endemic corruption, unemployment also affects four out of ten young people. And the life of the 42 million Iraqis is impacted by the consequences of climate change, droughts and water shortages only worse.