Bloodbaths and Injuries: Iraqi Protests Explained

Reading Time: 5 minutes

“At least 460 protesters were killed in October and November in various central and southern cities, including Baghdad,” Ali al-Bayati, an Iraqi Human Rights Commission Representative said in a statement.

Al-Bayati was referring to the death toll from the anti-government protests in Iraq, which took root in October 2019 and came to a culmination on December 1st. Reportedly, the death toll touched 460 from 331 in a span of a few days, with the number of injured individuals rising to 17,000.

Al-Bayati, however, stressed that the numbers are far greater – with the number of injured people exceeding 17,400 and nearly 3000 of these being permanently disabled due to injuries resulting in amputation and loss of vision.

Referring to the resignation of the former Prime Minister of Iraq, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, he said, “The government’s resignation will not suffice to absorb the anger of the protesters.” He stated that the protests will not die down completely because Iraq exists in a state of “an ongoing political and security crisis.”

The resignation was officially accepted by the Parliament on December 1st due to push-back from the citizens. But why were the citizens protesting?

Getting to the Grassroots – The Calm before the Storm

October 1, 2019: Anti-government protests flared up in Baghdad. The protesters pooled out onto the street due to issues like high unemployment, the country’s poor infrastructure which is in shambles and has not been built since the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and after the Iraqi government dissolved the Islamic State. Issues like basic services like clean water and electricity and allegations of a corrupt government also fueled the ire of the citizens.

The first protesters were young males who pinned the blame on the government. The sustained protest movement developed from muted discontent into flames due to a handful of incidents.

First, Master’s and Ph.D. students were maltreated by the government. These students were peacefully protesting unemployment and the lack of jobs available for weeks outside government buildings and were subject to attacks by the use of water cannons in late September to disperse these individuals.

Second, in the same time frame, the government decided to demote Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab-al Saadi, a popular Iraqi military leader. Al-Saadi was at the forefront of Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service, which was pivotal in retaking Mosul from the grips of ISIS and defeating the presence of the terror group in the country. Al-Saadi is widely respected and revered in Iraq for his defeat of ISIS, and his demotion from Lieutenant-General to a desk job in the Defense Ministry was deemed unjust and considered an insult.

The demotion sparked another movement within the protests as demonstrators held up posters with pictures of the leader and lead a social media campaign on Twitter and other mediums using the hashtag “we are all Saadi”.

Initially, when the protests took root, Iraqi security forces retaliated in an aggressive manner. Several protesters were killed while hundreds were injured. The forces used all kinds of heavy-handed tactics in their crackdowns from tear gas, water cannons to live ammunition to disperse the protestors.

Moreover, there was an internet blackout in certain areas of Baghdad to make it difficult for people to mobilize using social media. A curfew was also imposed on Baghdad to keep people in their homes.

The rights these protesters were demanding were incredibly basic. Mohammad Jasim, a protester, said in an interview with the Associated Press, “We want the very basic rights: Electricity, water, employment, and medicine, and nothing else… But this government is shooting at the crowd.”

After the initial push-back by the security forces, the crackdown escalated, which leaked the protests into other cities. After the first week, the death toll reached 150 people, while thousands of people were injured. The government refused to take any blame for the heavy hand the security forces dealt with the protesters, which deepened the frustration of the protesters, cementing the idea that the government was corrupt through and through and did not care for its citizens or their demands.

The Storm

Bilal Wahab, an Iraqi political expert, stated, “The protesters’ demands became more maximalist, they asked for changing the political system, changing the election laws, having fresh elections, asking the government to resign. So all of this is brewing, but in parallel to this, the question of brutality, the question of killing protesters, also started to drive a desire, or call for justice.”

Once these ideas took root, the outrage bubbled into something more, which turned the anti-government protests into calls for uprooting and reforming the entire Iraqi political system.

Currently, the Iraqi governance system is the one that the US helped lay down the foundations for after the invasion in 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein. This government was organized along sectarian lines, which helped in the representation of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias. However, the balance of power was unequal, with the current government being Shia-led. The system fosters the creation of political factions and made the government a lot less accountable to the public.

Moreover, the class of politicians reaped the most benefits at the expense of Iraqi citizens. The government is rife with corruption at all levels of the bureaucracy, and government officers act without facing any consequences for their actions. They also benefit from patronage networks. State-owned money has gone missing. According to Haaretz, $459 billion in oil revenues has gone missing instead of going back to the state. The common assumption is that political elites usurped the amount.

The backlash comes after years of frustration. Fanar Haddad, a fellow at the Middle East Institute, stated, “This is a reaction to 16 years of system failure. The sense that this is a political system that has cohered that robs the many of the services of the few and those with connections to the few.”

In addition to pressuring the Iraqi government, the protestors have challenged the influence of Iran on the country. The increasing influence of Iran and its control over a number of Shia-led political networks in Iraq has drawn ire from the citizens, as it is deemed as an interference in their democracy.

With the influence of the US in decline, Iran has become a much more prominent player in Iraqi politics as politicians and Shia militia groups remain obligated to the Iranian government. In a way, the frustration related to Iranian meddling forms part of the larger grievance against the incompetence of the government. A sense that their own government is accountable to everyone except for them has grown.

Initial Government Response

The government response was staggering. While the leaders conducted meetings with protesters and initially promised to increase the amount of money put to some services, the treatment from the security forces eroded the commitments of the government.

Initially, the Prime Minister issued a reform plan which detailed allocation of more subsidies to the poor and some job and educational training. Following the ire of the people when the second wave of protests in late October hit, the President promised electoral reforms. He also agreed to resign once a replacement was found.

Dr. Luna Khatib, an expert from Chatham House, commented on the situation, “Iraqis have realized that all they are getting is new faces that just do the same thing as previous faces… This disappointment is why, very quickly, demands for economic rights escalated into demands for fundamental changes in the political system… In the past, concessions were only cosmetic in nature and did not lead to a real solution to the problems that the protesters were demonstrating against.”

The Resignation

The resignation, according to some, should have been handed in much sooner. “I think he got signals from many circles, international and local, to stay on, and that he can contain the situation. I think they grossly underestimated the rage that was out there, and they misread basically what it was all about, ” said Laith Kubba, one of the advisers to the now ex-Prime Minister.

The Road Ahead

However, the resignation, while being a step in the right direction, is not enough. The road to a complete political reform is not an easy one. Kubba went on to say, “The system that was built and the powers that took over that system have led the country to a dead end. The country cannot continue with that system and with this political class. So the question now is how to map out a transition that will be the least costly to the country, bearing in mind that Iraq is in the midst of a region full of turbulence and violence… I think we need to focus on a transition where a council of dignitaries plays an intermediary role to win the confidence [of the Iraqi people].”

While the next step has been mapped out to choose a new premier, the public has different ideas. It believes that a popular referendum should be on the cards. Moqtada al-Sadr, a populist cleric, proposed that people should be given a choice from 5 candidates.