On 1 October 2019, protesters in the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad took to the streets to demonstrate against government corruption, high unemployment, and lack of basic services. Less than one week later, over 100 young Iraqis lay dead and many thousands more have been wounded. With tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia sky-high, America distracted by domestic politics, and with the Islamic State group (IS/Daesh) lurking in the background, the potential for further instability, and further bloodshed, is extremely high.
On 15 July 2018, Iraqi youth in the southern city of Basra began protesting against the same issues that would resurface in Baghdad over a year later. In addition to the aforementioned grievances, the people of Basra were increasingly growing frustrated with the lack of clean drinking water in the city. Due to climate change and increased upstream demand, and combined with Iranian drainage into the Shatt al-Arab waterway, much of Basra’s drinking water is unfit for consumption. Tens of thousands fell ill and were taken to hospitals, adding fury to the protests. The protesters began torching symbols of Iranian influence in the city, mostly Iranian-sponsored Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) headquarters, but also several Iraqi government buildings as well. The protests fizzled, returning periodically throughout the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 but never in large numbers.
October has changed that. With the Iraqi Army unable to deploy additional forces without withdrawing others from holding key territory against Daesh resurgence, it will increasingly fall on Iraqi Interior Ministry and PMF units to quell the unrest. Unfortunately, both the Interior Ministry (including the Iraqi Federal Police) and many of the PMFs are under the sway of their Iranian overseers, which has resulted in some reports of skirmishes between Iraqi security forces and Iran-aligned PMF (as of this writing these reports cannot be independently corroborated).
These protesters are not what many outsiders may think of them as. They are young, they grew up post-Saddam, and they have endured untold hardships throughout their lives. Iraq’s Sunni population has remained relatively silent throughout the protest, mostly due to a very real fear they would be called Ba’athist sympathizers or Daesh-affiliates and massacred in the streets by government forces. But the same issues that ail the Shia community in Iraq also impact the Sunni community; in fact, it does so to a much more extreme degree.
Iraq has a history of political turmoil and violence, but it is important not to let history dictate the future. That is to say, just because we’ve grown used to violence in Iraq doesn’t mean we should collectively ignore the pleas for help and attention that are coming out right now. Quite the opposite. We will do our best to keep our readers informed on events as they unfold.
Note: The videos used in this article were pulled from Twitter accounts reposting them to spread awareness. As such, the original poster cannot be accurately ascertained. If you own any of the videos in this article and would like credit, please contact @AramShabanian.
