on November 28, Amnesty International reported an eyewitness saying of a scene like a war-zone, when government SWAT, anti-riot and other security forces used live ammunition and a bulldozer to disperse largely peaceful protesters and reclaim a blocked bridge in the city of Nassiriya, Iraq, the second largest producer in OPEC.
Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps verified footage showing troops charging as they fired at protesters from what sound like automatic weapons near the city’s al-Zaitoon bridge. Multiple other verified videos show protesters running from gunfire, or screaming in fear or anguish, and tending to those killed or wounded in the violence [that continued from 3:00a.m. to 7:00a.m. local time. The eyewitness recounted men, women and children herded and chased from surrounding houses towards al-Habboobi Square, the traditional place for the protests, with shootings and beatings along the way.]
By December 1, the body count had exceeded 400 since protests spread from Baghdad in October.
Scroll to the end for the Russia-China connection.
Earlier in November, protesters burned tires to block routes to five major oilfields, and to fertilizer, cement, steel, and iron plants
in the southern Iraqi province of Basra, which is home to the biggest oil fields and the key oil export terminal in OPEC’s second-largest producer
to prevent workers and supply from going in or out.
...people are angry that the massive oil revenues the government is raking in don’t go towards improving basic services such as water and electricity. Protesters are also angry with endemic corruption and want the leaders, who do nothing for ordinary people, to resign….
The burning of the Iranian consulate in the holy city of Najaf, the seat of Iraq’s influential Shi’ite clergy, was reported in detail by AP on Wednesday —the consulate was set afire again on Sunday— of
one of the worst attacks targeting Iranian interests in the country since the anti-government protests erupted two months ago. The Iranian staff were not harmed and escaped out the back door.
Anti-government protests have gripped Iraq since Oct. 1, when thousands took to the streets in Baghdad and the predominantly Shiite south. The largely leaderless movement accuses the government of being hopelessly corrupt and has also decried Iran’s growing influence in Iraqi state affairs.
<big><big>Weeks ago blocking internet access, Iraq’s media regulator has now suspended nine television channels for their coverage of the protests,</big></big> at least one locked down and its equipment confiscated,
according an official from one of the channels under threat. Other channels have been asked by the regulatory commission to sign a pledge “agreeing to adhere to its rules,” said the official, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
On Friday, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi promised to quit to try to stem the violence and public anger, and Al-Jazeera reported Monday morning that Iraqi legislators approved his resignation in session on Sunday.
The prime minister also faced criticism from Iraq's top Shia leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who condemned the use of lethal force against the protesters and called for a new government.
A cabinet meeting on Saturday had approved Abdul Mahdi's announcement, which also suggested the resignation of key members of the Iraqi government, including the prime minister's chief of staff.
..."Based on the constitution, this resignation includes the whole government - ministers and the deputy prime minister," legal expert Tareq Harb told Al Jazeera.
"The government has now become a caretaker government, which will only address urgent issues until a new government is elected," he added.
"The largest political bloc or alliance will have 15 days to nominate a candidate which the president will then assign to form a new government within 30 days … This new cabinet will then be voted on by parliament, which needs an absolute majority to be voted in."
According to the number of seats won in the last election, Sairoon is the largest bloc. However, it said on Sunday it won't be nominating a candidate and wants to leave that decision to the Iraqi people.
Although Abdul Mahdi's resignation was welcomed by protesters in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, they said they will continue to demonstrate until they see a complete overhaul of the country's political system.
"The prime minister's resignation is only a drop in the ocean of our demands," said Dania, a 20-year-old IT student at Nahrayn Univeristy, who has been attending demonstrations since early October.
"We won't go back home until the PM's resignation triggers the parliament to be dissolved and early elections are held so that all the political parties and militias currently in power could be removed..."
Protesters weren’t satisfied with the announced resignation because they want a total overhaul of the way the system following the 2003 US-led invasion apportioned power among ethnic and sectarian groups, a “quota-based” political system putatively allowing certain individuals and groups to enrich themselves and expand their influence, while sinking most of the population in economic hardship and conflict.
Political analyst Ziad Al-Arrar said that "after the acceptance of the prime minister’s resignation, the Shia political blocs will try to overcome their differences so they can agree on a new prime minister."
<big><big>"Reaching this point will also require that the Kurds and the Sunnis agree to this new name,"</big></big> he added.
Elections in May 2018 ended without a single bloc winning a majority of seats to select a new prime minister.
To avoid a political crisis, parliament's two main political blocs - Sairoon, led by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah bloc ... linked to the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Units (PMF) - eventually forged an alliance, nominating Abdul Mahdi as prime minister.
But since the protests began, parliament has been deeply divided with Sadr going back and forth on his position to back the protesters, while Fatah, the second largest bloc in parliament, has backed the government...
In the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, there appears to be some solidarity with the Iraqis protesting in the south, but also apprehension that the political changes protesters want could undermine Kurdish autonomy and renew past devastating cuts in budget allocation for the Kurdish region that drastically eroded public services and function from 2014 until late 2018, when a new Iraqi central government headed by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was followed in March 2019 by partial restoration of budget to the Iraqi Kurdish region.
<big><big>Other interested international parties</big></big> were noted by oilprice.com this morning,
Ever since the U.S. signalled through its effective withdrawal from Syria that it now has little interest in becoming involved in military actions in the Middle East, the door has been fully opened to China and Russia to advance their ambitions in the region.
For Russia
as in the early 1950s, when it switched its patronage from Israel to Egypt as a presumed more profitable, biddable client, and launched a justification propaganda campaign against Israel that re-ignited hatred and drove conditions to ever-growing conflict other interested parties keep fueled ever since,
the Middle East offers a key military pivot from which it can project influence West and East and that it can use to capture and control massive oil and gas flows in both directions as well.
For China, the Middle East – and, absolutely vitally, Iran and Iraq – are irreplaceable stepping stones towards Europe for its era-defining ‘One Belt, One Road’ project. Earlier this week an announcement was made by Iraq’s Oil Ministry that highlights each of these factors at play, through a relatively innocuous-sounding [$121million] contract award to a relatively unknown Chinese firm [for the supergiant West Qurna 1 oilfield]...
Saudi Arabia’s century of expanding domination of oil, geography, and sea-routes, with the Israel-Palestine conflict constantly fueled as an added smokescreen that aggregates popular Arab-world sentiment in support of The Kingdom —support split by Iran in more recent decades— likely represents its trans-generational royal strategy for a strong negotiating position vis-a-vis China, Russia, and the West.
With ordinary working people ground up in the jaws of the double-neo-imperialist machinery of all of them.
Unless the growing democratic and Arab-Israel environmental and economic cooperation movement maybe puts a little spanner in those works.
As I’m told they say in FB, it’s complicated.