It is a date being discussed in Iraq’s tea shops, on television and in the streets with varying shades of hope, fear and cynicism.
On Friday, thousands of Iraqis are planning to take to the streets for their own “day of rage,” hoping to harness the popular anger that has swept through much of the Middle East but has failed to gain much traction here.
For all the faults of Iraq’s young democracy, the government here affords people more rights than places like Egypt, Tunisia or Libya. After all, about 60 percent of Iraqi voters participated in nationwide elections last March that were widely deemed free and fair, even if they were the start of an agonizing political deadlock that left Iraq adrift for nine months.
So far Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has publicly supported the rights of protesters, though he has warned them against violence. Senior Shiite clerics have made similar endorsements.
Although many Iraqis fault Mr. Maliki for failing to stop violence or deliver crucial services, most protests are more broadly focused, calling on the government to provide better electricity and more jobs, or for local officials, whom protesters contend are corrupt, to step down. Several demonstrations have advocated for more rights for widows and orphans.
More often than not, there has been talk in the street of huge protests, but only a few hundred people have shown up.Still, some protests have been met with violence. At least five demonstrators have been killed in clashes with public and private security forces, and scores more have been injured or arrested.
On Sunday night in Baghdad, for example, dozens of men in civilian clothes, some wielding knives and clubs, attacked 18 protesters who had set up chairs and a tent in the city’s fortuitously named Tahrir Square, promising to camp out until Friday’s demonstrations. Several protesters were badly beaten or stabbed, none of them fatally.
“They beat me indescribably,” said Ali Nama Hamidi. “I could not defend myself, I could not go to the hospital. I fell on the ground unconscious.”Iraq, he said, had become a “killer’s democracy.”Over the past few weeks the demonstrations have flared like geysers, erupting in the southern oil town of Basra one day, then the heavily Sunni city of Ramadi the next; in the poor Shiite city of Kut, then the fairly prosperous Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.
Protesters have set forth a patchwork quilt of demands. Fire the provincial leadership in Basra. Get rid of the governor of the heavily Shiite Wasit Province. Give the oil workers in the northern oil fields better working conditions. Halt a crackdown against Baghdad’s liquor shops and intellectual haunts. Cleanse the central government of corruption.
A demonstration in Baghdad several days ago encapsulated the potential and limitations of public protests in Iraq.It began among the dusty bookstores and cafes of Mutanabbi Street, the old city’s cultural heartland, and then flowed through the streets to Tahrir Square.
There, people denounced the political elite as thieves and charlatans who had offered empty promises to restore electricity service and provide jobs. They complained about the shortage of publicly funded food rations. Some held grisly photographs of dead relatives. Three women in black abayas told their story in a sing-song of shouts and cries, describing how their husbands had disappeared into Iraq’s labyrinthine detention system. Their children sat at their feet. Chants broke out: “Yes, yes to Iraq” and “No, no to corruption.”
“This is the beginning,” said Abbas Naim al-Maliki.“This is just the wind,” said Jalal Hussein. “The storm will come.”
And then the group of demonstrators, about 300 strong, set off across the Tigris River and stopped at one of the gates to the Green Zone. Beyond the cordon of blast walls and razor wire lay Iraq’s Parliament, the offices of government ministries and old Saddam-era palaces that had been given over to new politicians. The demonstrators, their ranks gradually diminishing as people wandered off, did not try to push their way inside.
By JACK HEALY and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, New York Times.
On Friday, thousands of Iraqis are planning to take to the streets for their own “day of rage,” hoping to harness the popular anger that has swept through much of the Middle East but has failed to gain much traction here.
For all the faults of Iraq’s young democracy, the government here affords people more rights than places like Egypt, Tunisia or Libya. After all, about 60 percent of Iraqi voters participated in nationwide elections last March that were widely deemed free and fair, even if they were the start of an agonizing political deadlock that left Iraq adrift for nine months.
So far Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has publicly supported the rights of protesters, though he has warned them against violence. Senior Shiite clerics have made similar endorsements.
Although many Iraqis fault Mr. Maliki for failing to stop violence or deliver crucial services, most protests are more broadly focused, calling on the government to provide better electricity and more jobs, or for local officials, whom protesters contend are corrupt, to step down. Several demonstrations have advocated for more rights for widows and orphans.
More often than not, there has been talk in the street of huge protests, but only a few hundred people have shown up.Still, some protests have been met with violence. At least five demonstrators have been killed in clashes with public and private security forces, and scores more have been injured or arrested.
On Sunday night in Baghdad, for example, dozens of men in civilian clothes, some wielding knives and clubs, attacked 18 protesters who had set up chairs and a tent in the city’s fortuitously named Tahrir Square, promising to camp out until Friday’s demonstrations. Several protesters were badly beaten or stabbed, none of them fatally.
“They beat me indescribably,” said Ali Nama Hamidi. “I could not defend myself, I could not go to the hospital. I fell on the ground unconscious.”Iraq, he said, had become a “killer’s democracy.”Over the past few weeks the demonstrations have flared like geysers, erupting in the southern oil town of Basra one day, then the heavily Sunni city of Ramadi the next; in the poor Shiite city of Kut, then the fairly prosperous Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.
Protesters have set forth a patchwork quilt of demands. Fire the provincial leadership in Basra. Get rid of the governor of the heavily Shiite Wasit Province. Give the oil workers in the northern oil fields better working conditions. Halt a crackdown against Baghdad’s liquor shops and intellectual haunts. Cleanse the central government of corruption.
A demonstration in Baghdad several days ago encapsulated the potential and limitations of public protests in Iraq.It began among the dusty bookstores and cafes of Mutanabbi Street, the old city’s cultural heartland, and then flowed through the streets to Tahrir Square.
There, people denounced the political elite as thieves and charlatans who had offered empty promises to restore electricity service and provide jobs. They complained about the shortage of publicly funded food rations. Some held grisly photographs of dead relatives. Three women in black abayas told their story in a sing-song of shouts and cries, describing how their husbands had disappeared into Iraq’s labyrinthine detention system. Their children sat at their feet. Chants broke out: “Yes, yes to Iraq” and “No, no to corruption.”
“This is the beginning,” said Abbas Naim al-Maliki.“This is just the wind,” said Jalal Hussein. “The storm will come.”
And then the group of demonstrators, about 300 strong, set off across the Tigris River and stopped at one of the gates to the Green Zone. Beyond the cordon of blast walls and razor wire lay Iraq’s Parliament, the offices of government ministries and old Saddam-era palaces that had been given over to new politicians. The demonstrators, their ranks gradually diminishing as people wandered off, did not try to push their way inside.
By JACK HEALY and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, New York Times.
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