Total Security Force Killings Since Protests Resumed at Over 100

​Security forces have fired teargas cartridges directly at protesters in Baghdad, Iraq on numerous occasions since protests resumed on October 25, 2019, killing at least 16, Human Rights Watch said today. The dead are among the large number of protesters Iraqi forces have killed since daily protests began in Baghdad and in other cities in southern Iraq against corruption and for better public services, among other demands.

According to a November 5 United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) report, the nationwide death toll from October 25 through November 4 reached at least 97. The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) tallied at least 105 dead and 5,655 injured during that same period. From November 5 to 6, Reuters reported that security forces had killed at least six more protesters.

“The high death toll includes people who took direct hits to the head from teargas cartridges, in numbers that suggest a gruesome pattern rather than isolated accidents,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “With the death toll now at over 100, all of Iraq’s global partners should be unequivocal in their condemnation.”

Anbar Province Detains, Harasses People for Facebook Posts

Authorities in Iraq’s Anbar governorate are suppressing the right of residents to show support for demonstrations elsewhere in the country, Human Rights Watch said today. In recent days, they have arrested two men for merely posting messages of solidarity on Facebook, questioned a third, and sent a fourth into hiding.

Since October 25,  2019, the authorities throughout Iraq have detained hundreds of protesters at or after demonstrations, but the Anbar arrests stand out in that authorities arrested the men merely for showing their support over social media.

“Despite years of terrible conflict, many Iraqis have felt free to speak out on political issues,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “But these cases mark a disturbing change, if you contrast these men’s entirely peaceful political statements with the completely inappropriate response by the Anbar authorities.”

Protests started in Baghdad and southern cities on October 1, demanding improved services and more action to curb corruption. Security forces used excessive lethal force against protesters during the first wave of demonstrations from October 1 to 9, and again starting on October 25. Eight Anbar residents told Human Rights Watch that Anbaris did not intend to hold protests there, concerned that authorities would not allow them given the recent history of ISIS taking control over much of the governorate.

Recent developments suggest that the US and its allies have become increasingly wary of China’s expanding influence inside Iraq, even while Washington continuously points out the threat supposedly posed by Iran instead.

​Over the past few weeks, Iraq has slowly but surely begun its re-descent into chaos. According to reports, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest Iraq’s current state of governance, with over 250 already being killed in clashes with security forces. One protester even died last week, after being hit in the chest by a tear-gas canister in Baghdad. At the time of writing, Iraqi protesters have just stormed Iran’s consulate in the holy city of Karbala, resulting in four further deaths and at least 19 injuries.

I can’t help but notice that, when Iraq is being ruled as a US client state, clashes with security forces that see hundreds of civilian deaths are no big deal. It’s not as if the US can hustle the international community to legitimize another invasion of a country it’s invaded twice before. It does therefore ring quite hypocritical when the sole basis of Washington’s call for the Syrian government to step down in 2011 seemed to be based on allegations of a similar fact scenario. But that is a topic for a separate article.

Then again, it was the US who plunged Iraq into chaos to begin with. The US, together with the UK, toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, fired close to 500,000 police and military personnel (which to some extent contributed to the rise of ISIS), and facilitated the deaths of over one million Iraqi civilians in the process.

Protests and the violent response of the government have shredded the myth of state-sponsored sectarianism as the organizing principle for political power.

​The persistence and magnitude of protests in Iraq since early October and the brutality of Iraqi government forces and militias seeking to crush them have shaken the country. More than 275 protesters have been killed and thousands injured, but the protests continue unabated.

Iraqis initially protested against corruption, unemployment and the failure of the government to deliver services, but after a month of brutal state violence, the protesters have called for the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, a complete overhaul of the political process in the country and disbanding of powerful political factions and their militias, most of which are backed and run by Iran.

The Iraqi government and the political elite have failed to respond in any significant manner to the protesters. On Thursday, Barham Salih, the president of Iraq, promised to draft a new electoral law, claiming that it would allow more young people to join the political process and put an end to the current system of deal-making in government formation. He also promised to reform the country’s election commission by bringing in independent experts as its members. And yet these promises were quickly dismissed by protesters as too little, too late — cosmetic changes aimed at upholding a discredited political system.

​Iran’s leaders say they have no wish to recreate the Persian empire in the present-day Middle East. Unlike the US, they say, Iran is not an imperialist power. That is not how it looks to many people in Lebanon, where Iran’s close financial and military links to the country’s leading Shia political organisation, Hezbollah, became the focus of angry anti-government street protests last week.

The benign view of Iran as friendly neighbourhood helper is also hard to square with its support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, where the death toll in four years of war has reached 100,000. This conflict resembles a classic proxy struggle between two external powers – Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia – that are each vying for regional dominance.

The pervasive influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps within Iran’s hardline clerical establishment, and its close ties to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are key factors shaping what moderates worry is a risky policy of geopolitical overreach. Most prominent among the hawks is Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, head of the IRGC’s elite Quds force.

So it was no surprise, perhaps, that Soleimani turned up in Iraq last week as mass demonstrations in Baghdad and other, mainly Shia, cities threatened to topple the government. Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s prime minister, owes his job to Iran, which became the main powerbroker after most US forces pulled out in 2011. Iraq is another non-province of Iran’s non-empire and Soleimani was not about to let it slip away.