Spring flower
On the first of this month, popular demonstrations started in Baghdad and several Iraqi cities in the south of the country. It is not the first time that the people took to the streets, but were preceded by several demonstrations calling for citizens to improve services and job opportunities and fight corruption in government institutions.
Demonstrations claimed the lives of more than a hundred dead and thousands injured, according to official statistics, after security forces practiced the most severe forms of violence against protesters demanding their rights.
In response, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi issued a package of decisions, most notably obtaining residential land for citizens, setting up small projects, and granting 175,000 dinars (about $ 145) for three months to the unemployed, and other decisions.
Abdul Mahdi also announced yesterday evening three days of mourning for the lives of the victims, both demonstrators and security forces who fell in the demonstrations, which did not stop for 48 hours to reduce tension between Iraqis.
| Ghazi Faisal Hussein believes that prosthetic solutions will not end the crisis (Al-Jazeera) |
not enough
Analysts and political experts see Abdul Mahdi's decisions as insufficient to fight corruption in Iraq and meet people's demands.
Ghazi Faisal Hussein, an adviser to the Iraqi Center for Strategic Studies, told Al-Jazeera Net that prosthetic solutions will not end the crisis, and that the corrupt political class must be brought to justice to recover the looted billions, dismantle the legislative and executive institutions under the auspices of the United Nations, amend the election law and hold transparent and fair elections away from fraud. And buy seats and positions in the millions.
`` Baghdad and other Iraqi cities have suffered injustice, oppression and marginalization for decades, and today they represent the Iraqi working class that has nothing and nothing to lose in the face of tyranny and systematic impoverishment and against the political class that has illegally influenced and plundered billions of public money, '' Hussein said.
He continued that "the expansion of the spread of demonstrations in important areas of Iraq will produce awareness against the repressive and authoritarian policies of the fascist parties, which adopted an undemocratic approach in the management of the country's affairs, because they do not believe in democracy and human rights, nor justice in the distribution of wealth and resources, and does not have a basic political theory To the civil state. "
| Al-Adhami says repression narrowed circle of demonstrations |
Narrowing of demonstrations
Journalist and academic Zaid Abdulwahab al-Adhami said that "the circle of demonstrations has been narrowed little by little because of the excessive repression by the Iraqi security services, which I have taken towards the mass of protesters since the first day of their movement."
Al-Adhami confirmed that those who follow the geography of the protest movement in the cities of Baghdad, Babylon, Dhi Qar, Nasiriyah, Najaf, Diwaniya and Amarah will find it started in about 30 areas, but within 9 days of the age of the demonstrations have shrunk to one area in Sadr City, east of the capital. Tribes and agreements with local authorities Protest movements were settled and normal life returned to the provinces.
Regarding the continuation of the demonstrations or not, he said that the movement of protests towards deflation in the cities of the demonstrations does not necessarily mean their end. Excessive repression and its societal repercussions may be the motives and motives for movement that may be postponed after the visit of the 40th Imam Hussein in Iraq, in addition to monitoring public opinion to promises. Governmental and legislative intentions and their subsequent realization or procrastination. "
He stressed that the use of the state's security resources fully to face the demonstrations has become a method to end the protest movement, pointing out that all the security classes of the army and police and the fight against terrorism and a popular mobilization participated in dealing with the movement, and this was only with the support of the main political forces participating in the government to protect The political system as a priority is secured, and then move to the stage of settling the demands of the demonstrators and the issuance of the necessary resolutions and legislation.