Blog Post 3: Iraq February 19th through February 25th, 2011

The main story of the last week is protests, protests, protests. The entire Middle East has erupted into protests, not to exclude Iraq. The protests centered around social reform, new jobs and direct supervision to try and reduce corruption in the government.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki made a statement on the night of Thursday, February 24th urging protestors not to take to the streets on Friday. He claimed that insurgent groups, such as the Al Qaeda and remnants from Saddam Hussein's Baath party were going to try and bring terror and chaos to the protests.

Map of the Green Zone from CNN on globalsecurity.org 

The protesters waived off the Prime Minister's warning as a scare tactic and took to the streets on Friday anyways. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets and things soon became violent. People threw rocks, got into scuffles with security forces, and protestors in Baghdad even pulled down barriers blocking the bridge to the Green Zone. The Green Zone is a cordoned off area of Baghdad where US authorities live and work.

Riot Police guarding the Green Zone

These protests in Iraq quickly turned violent on Friday, forcing security forces and the Iraqi Army to resort to using lethal force. There are reports of forces opening fire on groups of protesters all over Iraq in places like Baghdad, Hawija, Salahuddin, and Mosul. It's not clear how many have been killed and injured so far. Articles from the International Herald Tribune and Al Jazeera give a more detailed look at the protests.


Tunisia really sparked a sort of "Middle Eastern Revolution" that has people demanding more from their government. The protests in Iraq are slightly different than those in other countries, though. Iraqi protesters are calling for better services from and reforms in their government instead of dismantling it and starting over. This shows that while the government the US helped set up in Iraq is weak and needs to be adapted, the people have generally taken to it. They accept the democracy we tried setting up there and are now exercising their rights within that democracy. The use of lethal force is a little nerve racking, but if the protests calm down a bit and use peace instead of violence, I think they can get big changes to happen.