Hundreds of protesters on Wednesday attacked and occupied for several hours the Iraqi parliament, located in the Green Zone of the capital Baghdad, the area in which the prime minister’s residence and other military-protected diplomatic and government buildings are concentrated. The protesters were almost all supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who heads one of the two main political camps in parliament: the Sairoon coalition, explicitly anti-Iranian (Iran shares a long border with Iraq and, for various reasons, has great influence there Iraqi politics).
The protests were directed at the decision by the opposition to present its own candidate for prime minister, Mohammed al Sudani, to the Iran-backed Shiite parties-led Coordination Framework coalition. Iraq has been without a government for several months. The last elections last October were won by the coalition of al Sadr, one of Iraq’s most powerful politicians, who failed to form a government. Since then, Iraqi politics has been in a stalemate.
Demonstrators entered Parliament, waving Iraqi flags, chanting anti-al-Sudani slogans and displaying portraits of al-Sadr. No parliamentarians were present at the time, only security forces who used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the protest.
The protest died down a few hours later when al Sadr urged his supporters to “quietly return to their homes,” saying their message had been received and that the protest would not spread further.
NOW – protesters storm #IraqParliament in Baghdad.pic.twitter.com/BK5FPvG2wk
– Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 27, 2022
The stalemate Iraqi politics is currently in is also linked to the fact that the two main factions in parliament, namely the Iran-backed coalition and the anti-Iran coalition led by al Sadr, have so far been unable to agree on the election of a president , a necessary step for the appointment of the prime minister and the subsequent formation of a government: to complete this step one needs a two-thirds majority in parliament, which currently does not exist.
The situation became even more complicated last June when al Sadr ordered the 73 MPs of his political movement (the Sadrista movement, which is also the main component of the Sairoon coalition) to resign.
The move had been deemed risky because it was a kind of bet: the vacant seats had actually been allocated to the runners-up in the single-seat constituencies in which the Sadrist MPs had been elected, i.e. candidates from the other camp, the pro-Iranian. Al Sadr’s idea, several commentators had written, therefore seemed to be to allow opponents to take the political initiative and blame them if they failed, while at the same time inciting his many supporters to stage massive protests with the aim of delegitimizing the opposition .
Wednesday’s protests showed that al Sadr does indeed have enough support to create political instability at a time when it’s hard to imagine breaking out of the stalemate that began with October’s elections.
– Also read: The Incredible Political Tour of Muqtada al Sadr