Thousands of Iraqis commemorate 2019 anti-power uprising

The unprecedented protest, triggered in October 2019, had spread throughout the country, particularly in the poor, predominantly Shiite south. For several months - in this oil-rich Iraq - hundreds of thousands of demonstrators had pounded the pavement, denouncing pell-mell youth unemployment, decaying infrastructure and lack of democracy.

The movement had run out of steam under the blow of a repression which had left nearly 600 dead and 30,000 injured but also the confinement linked to the coronavirus. Three years later, nothing – or almost nothing – has changed.

The same big parties still monopolize political life. A year after the October 2021 legislative elections, the political barons are still clashing over the choice of the next Prime Minister.

“The people demand the fall of the regime,” chanted thousands of demonstrators, most of them very young, on Saturday. Brandishing Iraqi flags and portraits of the "martyrs" of 2019, they gathered in the emblematic Tahrir Square for commemorations charged with anger, noted an AFP correspondent.

The protesters gathered at the entrance to the Republic Bridge, blocked by several successive rows of concrete walls to block access to the Green Zone, a district housing Western embassies and state institutions.

They threw iron barriers blocking the bridge into the river, an Interior Ministry official said, reporting 18 minor injuries among riot police after rocks and glass bottles were thrown.

The forces responded by firing several rounds of smoke bombs to drive the crowd away, according to the AFP correspondent.

At least 28 cases of suffocation were recorded among protesters, according to the interior official.

- "Fighting the power" -

"Today it is essential to confront power," asserts activist Ali al-Habib.

"All the bridges and roads are blocked because the authorities are afraid of demonstrators," he said, castigating "the infighting within the political class, which totally ignores the will of the people".

The commemorations take place in a tense context, the two major poles of political Shiism clashing over the appointment of a new Prime Minister and possible early legislative elections.

The influential Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr calls for an immediate dissolution of parliament. Opposite, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of pro-Iranian Shiite factions, wants the establishment of a government before any election.

On Wednesday, rocket fire targeted the Green Zone during a session of Parliament.

On August 29, tensions peaked when supporters of Sadr clashed with the army and men from Hashd al-Chaabi, former pro-Iran paramilitaries integrated into the regular troops, and who are politically opposed to the Sadrists.

More than 30 Sadrist supporters died in these clashes.

- "Claim our rights" -

“We will continue to claim our rights. We will not be silent in the face of injustice”, insists a teacher speaking on condition of anonymity, castigating “the quarrels and clashes between the leaders”.

Hundreds of Iraqis also demonstrated in Nassiriya, the big city in the marginalized south.

Much too absorbed in their internal quarrels, the politicians show themselves powerless in the face of the multiple crises that are rocking Iraq.

There are geopolitical tensions from which the country cannot extricate itself. Iran or Turkey, two great neighbours, thus occasionally bomb Iraqi Kurdistan to weaken armed Kurdish opposition movements there - Iranian or Turkish.

On Wednesday, Tehran-led missile and drone strikes against Iranian Kurdish nationalist factions left 14 dead and 58 injured.

After decades of devastating conflicts, in the absence of economic reforms and major infrastructure projects in a country plagued by endemic corruption, the authorities are struggling to curb unemployment, which affects four out of ten young people.

And the daily lives of 42 million Iraqis are being hit hard by the consequences of climate change, with droughts and water shortages only getting worse in what was once fertile Mesopotamia, the cradle of agriculture.