Flash Protests Turn to Clashes in Iraq

Iraqi anti-government protesters confront security forces in the southern city of Basra, on October 31, 2020. (AFP)
Iraqi anti-government protesters confront security forces in the southern city of Basra, on October 31, 2020. (AFP)
TT

Flash Protests Turn to Clashes in Iraq

Iraqi anti-government protesters confront security forces in the southern city of Basra, on October 31, 2020. (AFP)
Iraqi anti-government protesters confront security forces in the southern city of Basra, on October 31, 2020. (AFP)

Anti-government protests descended into clashes in several Iraqi cities on Sunday, including the southern port city of Basra and the capital Baghdad.

In Basra, police officers and troops fired into the air to disperse around 500 protesters who had been throwing rocks, AFP correspondents said.

Meanwhile, a few hundred young Iraqis returned to Baghdad's Tahrir Square for a flash protest, clashing briefly with security forces.

Authorities had conducted a major operation to clear a year-long anti-government encampment from the square -- the epicenter of the protest movement -- and had only reopened it a day earlier.

Further south in Hilla, hundreds of students marched with banners decrying the killing and kidnapping of activists in recent months.

"We'll stay here, for the blood of our martyrs and the love of our country," said Abrar Ahmed, a student demonstrator in the city.

"It's our revolution and we must continue it, as not a single one of our demands were met!" she added.

A similar protest took place in the town of Kut, where dozens turned out to demand justice for some 600 demonstrators who have been killed in protest-related violence over the past year.

Unprecedented demonstrations erupted across Baghdad and Iraq's Shiite-majority south in October 2019 as protesters called for jobs, basic services, a total overhaul of the ruling class and an end to corruption.

There has been virtually no accountability for the deaths in those rallies.

Two more activists were gunned down in Kut in recent days.

The "October Revolution" marked its one-year anniversary a week ago, with thousands hitting the streets of southern cities and the capital.

But authorities swiftly reinstated calm, deploying in large numbers in the squares and intersections that were once the hot spots of the anti-government rallies.

Abdallah Ahmed, another student protesting in Hilla on Sunday, insisted the movement was far from over.

"We're not commemorating the revolution -- we're continuing it," he told AFP.

In the southern flashpoint city of Nasiriyah, demonstrators torched tires on a main highway to decry unemployment and poor public services.

Iraq is one of the most oil-rich countries in the world but has suffered chronic water and power shortages for decades.

The novel coronavirus pandemic and tumbling oil prices have taken a heavy toll this year, with poverty rates expected to soar to 40 percent.



Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: Resolution 1701 Only Tangible Proposal to End Lebanon Conflict

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
TT

Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: Resolution 1701 Only Tangible Proposal to End Lebanon Conflict

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)

Politicians in Beirut said they have not received any credible information about Washington resuming its mediation efforts towards reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon despite reports to the contrary.

Efforts came to a halt after US envoy Amos Hochstein’s last visit to Beirut three weeks ago.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri dismissed the reports as media fodder, saying nothing official has been received.

Lebanon is awaiting tangible proposals on which it can build its position, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The only credible proposal on the table is United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, whose articles must be implemented in full by Lebanon and Israel, “not just Lebanon alone,” he stressed.

Resolution 1701 was issued to end the 2006 July war between Hezbollah and Israel and calls for removing all weapons from southern Lebanon and that the only armed presence there be restricted to the army and UN peacekeepers.

Western diplomatic sources in Beirut told Asharq Al-Awsat that Berri opposes one of the most important articles of the proposed solution to end the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

He is opposed to the German and British participation in the proposed mechanism to monitor the implementation of resolution 1701. The other participants are the United States and France.

Other sources said Berri is opposed to the mechanism itself since one is already available and it is embodied in the UN peacekeepers, whom the US and France can join.

The sources revealed that the solution to the conflict has a foreign and internal aspect. The foreign one includes Israel, the US and Russia and seeks guarantees that would prevent Hezbollah from rearming itself. The second covers Lebanese guarantees on the implementation of resolution 1701.

Berri refused to comment on the media reports, but told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was the first time that discussions are being held about guarantees.

He added that “Israel is now in crisis because it has failed to achieve its military objectives, so it has resorted to more killing and destruction undeterred.”

He highlighted the “steadfastness of the UN peacekeepers in the South who have refused to leave their positions despite the repeated Israeli attacks.”