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Is Muqtada al-Sadr able to snuff out Iraq’s mass street protests

Pitcher

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Pitcher Grand Master

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Is Muqtada al-Sadr able to snuff out Iraq’s mass street protests

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When Iraq's anti-government protests began last year, it was supporters of renowned Shiite Muslim clericMuqtada al-Sadr who added heft.

They came in the thousands, manning front lines during clashes with riot police and providing security for the demonstrators as they settled in for the long haul.

Now, it might be Sadr who extinguishes their fight.

A flurry of statements from the cleric in recent months has fractured the movement, prompting accusations of betrayal. He has pulled his supporters away from protest camps and then sent those followers back to battle those who remained.

Threats made by his militiamen have sent political activists into hiding. Sadr’s followers have attacked his critics with knives.

“They’re insulting Sadr, and we can’t allow it,” cried one of his supporters, Saeed Alaa al-Yassiri, on a recent day in Baghdad’s central Tahrir Square as his group pushed other demonstrators back with sticks and knives. “They’re serving American agendas now. This square needs to be cleaned.”

Sadr is a storied figure in Iraq, with a history of agitation against U.S. troops and fierce loyalty from tens of thousands of pious and working class acolytes.

But he is also something of a shape-shifter; in the years since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the cleric has positioned himself variously as a sectarian militia leader, a revolutionary figure and a nationalist who can unify the country. His reliance on Iranian support has also waxed and waned, depending at times, it has seemed, on the optics for his political base.

But Iraq’s youth movement has emerged as a challenge to his long-standing image as a man who can command the country’s streets. As the largest spontaneous uprising in the country’s history, the protest movement has already felled one government and rejected a prime minister-designate that Sadr had backed. The candidate, Mohamed Tawfiq Allawi, stepped aside Sunday.
More than 500 demonstrators have been killed by Iraq’s security forces and Iran-backed militias since October, human rights and security officials say. The violence has turned what started as anti-corruption protests into a revolt against the entire political system, with growing anger and mockery directed at Iran’s leading role — and now at the cleric himself.

“In this sense, it is the nature of Iraq’s protest politics that has changed, not Sadr himself,” said Ben Robin-D’Cruz, a researcher on Iraqi politics at the University of Edinburgh.

Sadr’s followers joined the protests from day one. Young men from Sadr City — a poor and sprawling district ofBaghdad named for his father, a slain ayatollah, where he has long enjoyed popular support — turned up spontaneously and repeatedly clashed with Iraq’s riot police.

The protesters say they are fed up with the endemic corruption and lack of political freedoms that grew out of a political system forged in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion. Despite initial support for their demands, Sadr called for a separate march with the support of Iran-backed militias in late January and then tweeted — apparently from Iran — that he would “try not to interfere in the [protests], either negatively or positively.”

He ordered his supporters to leave Iraq’s protest camps days later, and then he sent them marching back, this time in opposition to the young crowds they once camped alongside.

“It’s not the riot police attacking us anymore, it’s them,” said Walid Fadhil, 27, watching warily on a recent day as the violence unfolded.

Dozens of people have been killed or wounded in the latest clashes.

“It’s changed everything,” said Reem, a 28-year-old protester in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, waving her hand toward the tents that have emptied out in recent weeks.

 

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Pitcher Grand Master

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Iraqi revolution...a quantum leap in collective awareness

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The Iraqi youth rose up against corrupt government in October last year and they are still paying the price of this with their blood as they seek to end such regimes.

What the current crop of politicians apparently do not want to understand — or they overlook selectively — is that recycling the same group or their relatives, or even individuals who were appointed in previous criminal governments, is what the people on the streets believe to be the cancer that is eating away at Iraq’s political system and what is left of the state. This applies from the highest official to the most junior employee, including those in the economic and security sectors.

What is more dangerous than all of this is that it has become an integral part of daily life. It has become normal for ordinary people to have to protect themselves, to seek benefit from somewhere, or simply to make do.

Corruption, in all its forms, is no longer restricted to the ruling class, but has made its way down to society in state departments and their employees, schools, hospitals, in the streets, airports, ports, markets and even families. This threatens their survival and has made it easy for radicalisation, terrorism and fragmentation to spread. 

This is what the country has experienced during the years of occupation and what has resulted from the armed militias and terrorism that feed on corruption, especially with the availability of massive oil revenues, which is what the uprising wants to eradicate.

Ordinary people reject the recycling of politicians, not because they do not like the look of them; or because they are fond of sleeping in the squares in protests away from their homes and families; or out of desire for such positions themselves; but because they know very well the magnitude of the disaster caused by corrupt rulers and thieves. They also know what having them remaining in their positions will do to the country.

This is a quantum leap in collective awareness and making it a priority is necessary. It is a continuation of what the ordinary citizens in other countries have achieved; they too are living in transition from onegovernment to another, although there are some differences.

In Tunisia, for example, there is a successful model of transitioning from a tyrannical regime to a democratic government. It is no longer a secret that the course of the revolution would not achieve the youth’s aspirations for a better future and the independence of the state and its security, if the corrupt government established by the former regime was not eradicated. Despite the political change, the society still lives part of the past, and therein lies the danger.

Transitional justice failed in Iraq after the early years of occupation for many reasons, including the inability to work under the occupation, the racist policies of its local sectarian governments, and a lack of political and security stability. The path to transitional justice, including accountability, truth, dignity and reparations in Tunisia, did not achieve the expected success. 

The International Centre for Transitional Justice noted this a few days ago at an international conference in Tunisia on truth, accountability, recovery of looted funds and how transitional justice can combat corruption.

The centre says that the disruption was caused by limiting transitional justice to violations of civil and political rights. 

They noted that some countries, such as Argentina, Chile and South Africa, focused on crimes such as torture, murder, forced disappearances and prolonged detention without looking into the corruption that was endemic among officials. 

Notable exceptions have been mentioned in only a few countries, where transitional justice contributes to pursuing accountability for both human rights violations and corruption.

The situation in Iraq differs in that it is experiencing transitional justice in several ways, perhaps the most important of which is the lack of sovereignty, the absence of a government that represents the people, the prolonged violations of human rights, and the country ranking high on the list of administrative and financially corrupt countries. 

The magnitude of theft in contracts and currency smuggling has reached hundreds of billions of dollars, figures that ordinary citizens cannot fully comprehend until they are expressed as $15,000 per person (if we are counting only half of the wasted income from oil only since the occupation in 2003); that is $100,000 per Iraqi family. 

However, following other countries’ experiences with transitional justice, such as Tunisia and South Africa, and looking at their experience in combating corruption and recovering illegally looted and acquired assets, as well as holding the corrupt officials accountable, it is necessary for judicial reform and the reform of other state institutions in order to benefit from their successes and avoid their failures.

The similarity of oppressive authoritarian regimes and the restriction of national wealth to a few corrupt hands makes the experiences of confronting such regimes and uniting the efforts to get rid of them valuable beyond just one country. 

This imposes forms of struggle and solidarity that are not necessary new, but in some cases take us back to the era of national liberation.

We are noticing this among the youth in the liberation arenas in Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon. The concepts that peoples have long fought to regain, because they are part of their rights, such as their homeland, freedom, dignity and punishment of the oppressors and the corrupt, have been restored to the forefront of the growing realm of consciousness. 

They are the same values that the colonists wanted to erase and managed to do so over time, in cooperation with the local corrupt elite. This success emerged in the form of authoritarian and sectarian governments in addition to submission to the occupier.

The depth of the demands of the uprisings for the homeland became clearer with the continuation of theprotests and the martyrdom of young people almost daily. 

The demands to topple the regime and hold the killers accountable, as well as calling for an end to nepotism and favouritism, are essential to determining the composition of the next government, albeit transitional, and to establish the foundations of any future national administration. It is a qualitative leap that combines the ambition to clean up politics, the judiciary, the economy and practices that have permeated the structure of society for decades. These are necessary tasks if Iraq is to rise from its repression.

The uprising, with the courage and sacrifices of its youth, has given the people hope for real change, and not just recycling the corrupt politicians, which was the case in the past. It has also raised awareness that the injustice, humiliation and deprivation of rights are not targeted at individuals, but are aimed at all citizens collectively. 

This is what the current government, with all of its illegal weapons used against protestors daily, brutally and immorally, will not be able to eliminate forever, despite its desire to do so.

 

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Pitcher Grand Master

Pitcher

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1 minute ago, Pitcher said:

Ordinary people reject the recycling of politicians, not because they do not like the look of them; or because they are fond of sleeping in the squares in protests away from their homes and families; or out of desire for such positions themselves; but because they know very well the magnitude of the disaster caused by corrupt rulers and thieves. They also know what having them remaining in their positions will do to the country.

 

I believe we have a similar situation in the USA.  That is why Trump was elected in 2016 and if Biden is the nominee this year Trump will be elected again. No one will get excited about Biden unless he goes and gets a dynamic VP candidate.  Just my opinion.  

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patrick50 Enthusiast

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Listen Joe Biden will never be president as I believe he is mentally fit or physically fit for the job. He is only being used as 

a front man one who is somewhat likeable for the moderate democrats. I believe it will be who they pick for VP may indeed 

be their wish to be the real president.

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horsesoldier Grand Master

horsesoldier

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Back to being on task .....more important question is - Will someone snuff out Sadr ? They know beyond a shadow of doubt he’s an Iranian stooge.

.... laying on more popcorn for the Trump/Biden debate. Biden doesn’t even know what he’s running for: and there’s another Biden out there if after you’ve taken a look at Biden and don’t like what U see, vote for the other one.  😂

 

 

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Barbara020548 Newbie

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On 3/5/2020 at 11:24 PM, markb57 said:

UNFORTUNATELY, Stacy Abrams has been talked about as Bidens VP choice and If elected, Biden would be lucky to make a full year of Presidency. Biden is just a setup to get a extremely radical black woman into the Presidency.

VERY Unfortunate, the USA presently has an "extremely" unstable, COMMUNIST Russia & North Korea, sympathizer & collaborator(Donald Trump) in the White House.

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paperboy Apprentice

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I'm locking this thread.   It went way off base - this is not the place to debate US political issues or elections.   Iraq News goes here.    Sorry, Pitcher, you started this off in the right direction, but it got high-jacked.   

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