Ali Al-Rasouli - Baghdad

Since the protests began on the first of last October in Iraq, the authorities and political parties have relied on confronting the demonstrations in several ways through gradual stages.

The first of these methods was to escalate the repression that left hundreds of dead and thousands wounded, through unprecedented arrests, and then launch smear campaigns against the demonstrators, and then burning buildings and fabricating acts of sabotage, until the supporters of the parties entered the protest line within the game of the counter street, then confront the demonstrators. By stabbing and intimidation, and ending with a new escalation of repression in the form of kidnappings and assassinations of activists in an attempt to discourage them from continuing to sit in the protest areas.

Foil schemes
However, the protesters - especially in the capital Baghdad - managed to overcome what was considered a trap prepared by the power parties and armed factions to divert the path of the demonstrations from their peacefulness, after a mobilization announced by unknown parties last week via social networks of "million", and called on them to storm the Green Zone, which It includes the American and British embassies, as well as the headquarters of the government, parliament, the Presidency of the Republic and sovereign ministries, before the coordination committees and through statements broadcast in the demonstration arenas and communication sites announced their innocence from those calls and raising the slogan "No lesson in transit", in reference to crossing the Republic Bridge to find The green area is surrounded.

Prominent activists in the demonstrations indicated - in an interview with Al Jazeera Net - that they succeeded in thwarting an attempt to distort the peaceful protests, after a plan for political forces that was intended to storm the Green Zone in order to push the army to respond, which would give sufficient coverage and the argument to eliminate the demonstrations.

Ali Wajih saw that the necessity of changing the rules of the political game is one of the fruits of the protests (Al-Jazeera)

Unity
The activist in the demonstrations, Muhammad al-Jubouri, said, "The Tahrir Square in Baghdad and the various demonstration arenas in the central and southern governorates include a community of different doctrines, religions and components."

He added that "what raises the concerns of the power parties today is the national unity witnessed by the demonstration arenas, especially since these parties were accustomed to planting the seeds of division between the people of one people on the basis of the component, religion and beliefs, in an attempt to discourage them from pursuing and pursuing their corruption and misuse of power."

He continued, "We will continue our peaceful movement until implementing our demands related to changing the system of government, rewriting the constitution in Tahrir Square, and holding the killers and thieves of the public money from politicians and even militia leaders involved in the bloodshed of demonstrators and defenseless civilians."

As for civil activist Ali Wajih, he pointed out during his talk to Al-Jazeera Net that "the greatest fruits of the protests in Iraq are social ones, the most prominent of which is the redrawing of popular Iraqi political awareness and the need to change the rules of the political game."

Wajih warned that "the popular movement today has re-demarcated Iraq's relationship with regional states, and clearly indicated the interference of all countries with Iraqi affairs, led by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Regarding the age group participating in the broader Iraqi protests for years, Wajih confirmed that "this movement gave strength to a new youth generation who imagined themselves on the sidelines, but it has become the body of the protest movement."

He pointed out that "the protests also pushed the political forces to rearrange their cards, and to try to provide what satisfies the rising street", noting that "the confidence that this generation feels about itself is the greatest fruit of the protests at all, and it will be the path towards many accomplishments." In the coming times. "

Al-Bayati considered that the protests broke the barrier of fear among Iraqi youth (Al-Jazeera)

Fears's barrier
In turn, a member of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Iraq, Ali Al-Bayati, said that "the recent protests have broken the barrier of fear among Iraqi youth in particular, and the Iraqi masses in general."

Al-Bayati said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that "the real audacity in the current protests is to demand rights and benefit from the democratic mechanisms available in the Iraqi political process that have remained rigid and inactive since 2003."

He pointed out that "the demonstrations revealed the true face of the youth of Iraq, who expressed his love for the homeland and its willingness to defend it and its land and sovereignty, and culminated in 2014 when he went to defend the land of Iraq after the Islamic State invaded parts of it, and provided the precious and precious for that."

Al-Bayati added that the youth generation expressed this by demonstrating and protesting for more than two months in order to maintain the Iraqi political system and democratic process, after it became threatened by administrative, financial and quotas corruption.