Nasiriyah (the center of the Dhi Qar governorate in southern Iraq) has been known over the past years as one of the areas that witness the most popular demonstrations and clashes between demonstrators and the security forces. As a result, the city's name has emerged in local and international news bulletins as a political and security hot spot.
According to many activists and officials in the governorate, the reasons for the continuation of the demonstrations in Nasiriyah are many, including political, social, economic and even intellectual.
Al-Ghazi considered that the protesters' conviction is based on the fact that protest and escalation are a means to obtain rights (Al-Jazeera Net)
political reasons
The pace of protests in Nasiriyah expanded after the October 2019 demonstrations, as the city's activists are still organizing demonstrations that have often developed into confrontations with the security forces.
According to civil activist Salam al-Ghazi, many reasons have made Nasiriyah a center for protest, assuring Al-Jazeera Net that it has been going on for 3 years, and that it has become organized by multiple groups such as unemployed university graduates, workers and others, which sometimes leads to road blocks and clashes.
He believes that the demonstrators' conviction indicates that rights can only be obtained through protest and escalation, which they attribute to the fact that the federal government did not respond to the demonstrators except in the event of an escalation, which encouraged the continuation of the demonstrations.
Regarding the political situation, since 2019, Dhi Qar has been devoid of any political party headquarters, but the masses of these parties are working to destabilize the city’s situation by infiltrating the demonstrators and escalating with the security forces in many cases, as he put it.
He continues that the differences between the parties do not stop with the traditional ones, as their intensity reached the parties that emerged from the popular protests, which contributed to the escalation of the situation, as Nasiriyah did not witness real development, even though Parliament had voted earlier to consider the governorate as a disaster.
For his part, Muhannad al-Janabi, a professor of political science at Cihan University, believes that Nasiriyah, after the 2019 protests, became the capital of the demonstrators as a result of the violence inflicted on their peers in Baghdad, which led to the victory of many candidates in the parliamentary elections that were held in 2021 with the government being forced to change the governor and appoint another Calculated on the demonstrators, according to him.
Speaking to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Janabi adds that the reasons for the continuation of the demonstrations are due to the frustration of the protesters after the new parties were unable to achieve the demands, in addition to the fact that the traditional parties worked to inflame the situation in order to break the will of their residents, and their method was by investing the differences between the demonstrators.
Economic reasons
The economic aspect plays a role, as the parliamentarian Hassan al-Asadi confirms that the poverty rate in the province has reached 40%, considering that this is a dangerous indicator, pointing out in his speech to one of the media that the percentage of people living below the poverty line in Dhi Qar reached 35%.
For his part, the independent deputy in Parliament, Daoud Al-Aidan, told Al-Jazeera Net that the economic situation in the city was affected by many factors, including the mismanagement of the water and agriculture file, which led to a large exodus of rural people to the city, pointing out that the other problem is the holders of higher degrees. The unemployed, as the youth of Nasiriyah compared their conditions with their peers in other governorates, they decided to continue demonstrating, according to him.
Al-Janabi: There are many political intellectual dimensions in Nasiriyah that have made it, for decades, productive of political thought (Al-Jazeera Net)
intellectual reasons
On the intellectual side, Professor of Political Science Muhannad Al-Janabi talks about that there are many political intellectual dimensions in Nasiriyah that have made it, over the past decades, productive of political thought, which is evident in many of the party leaders that emerged from Nasiriyah during the past decades in the monarchy and the republican era. .
He continues, "There is an intellectual contradiction even among the October demonstrators, which fuels the ongoing demonstrations so far, and therefore what is happening is a natural result of a social transformation and the maturation of the thought of a protest political opposition, which makes it maintain its centrality in the ongoing demonstrations, apart from the rest of the neighboring provinces, with the demonstrators breaking the barrier of fear."
In this direction, the representative of Nasiriyah Al-Aidan, who adds in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net that the people of Nasiriyah do not believe in a unified ideology, meaning that there is no single thought that controls all its children, attributing this to the social nature of them.
As for the post-2003 period, according to Al-Eidan, many of the people of Nasiriyah reject the political situation that depends on quotas, and that the majority of the people of Nasiriyah refuse to join parties to obtain rights, pointing out that the failure to bring about any real change in Nasiriyah since 2019 led to the continuation of the demonstrations .
For his part, security and strategic expert Fadel Abu Ragheef believes that the people of Nasiriyah have a great balance in political thought since ancient times, making it the first governorate in the birth of intellectual and ideological leaders, which resulted in the city’s dissatisfaction with half-solutions, as he put it.
Abu Ragheef described Nasiriyah activists as real protesters who did not take advantage of the protests for personal interests (Al-Jazeera)
The security situation
Nasiriyah witnessed a major security escalation last week, which Al-Aidan considered an attempt to shuffle the cards, especially since the demonstrators who came out recently did not carry any banners or clear demands, considering that there are many question marks about the recent demonstrations, according to him.
For his part, the security expert, Abu Ragheef, in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, attributes the main reason for what has been happening in Nasiriyah since 2019 until now to the amount of victims and blood that the city has lost, especially since many people took advantage of these demonstrations and rose to government and legislative positions, while ignoring the people of the city.
Abu Ragheef added that the demonstrators in Nasiriyah now count the real demonstrators who did not take advantage of the demonstrations for their "personal" interests, considering that what happened was a "centrifugal process" that led to the separation of the real demonstrators from the reformers, and that these demonstrations will continue until the next elections, whether early or regular. Provided that it creates a different reality through which the people of the city can obtain their rights.
On the governmental side, the official spokesman for the local government, Abu al-Hassan al-Badri, considered that the governorate, since the change of the local government, has witnessed a decline in the intensity of popular demonstrations in general, with the exception of the recent actions about a week ago, describing them as "subversive."
Al-Badri continues, in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, that the governorate has recorded a significant improvement in the economic situation through the number of projects that the local government has embarked on implementing, and as for the factional demonstrations of the unemployed, he attributes this to the neglect that the governorate suffered during previous governments, which is what The new local government was able to reduce it by providing thousands of job grades and job opportunities, as he put it.