The Iraqi prime minister has yielded. After two months of fiercely repressed opposition, Adel Abdel Mahdi, an independent without a partisan or popular base, announced Friday (November 29th) that he was going to resign, as Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani had claimed earlier. tutelary figure of politics in Iraq.
In Tahrir Square in Baghdad, the epicenter of protests in the capital, the young protesters abandoned the stones they were throwing at the security forces to start dancing at the announcement of Mr. Abdel Mahdi.
"This is our first victory, and we will have more against others" politicians, whom the demonstrators consider corrupt, incompetent and affiliated with the influential powers in Iraq, at the head of which Iran, launched one of them to Agence France-Presse (AFP) in the middle of the nationalist chants broadcast by the tuk-tuk drivers, those little three-wheeled vehicles that became the makeshift ambulances of the revolt.
"It's a big step, even though it was late and we had very bloody days"Ali Hussein, a 20-year-old student who is demonstrating in Nassiriya, said more than four hundred Iraqis have died sincest October and thousands more injured, many of whom will remain disabled for their entire lives, according to a report prepared by AFP from medical and police sources.
Shortly before the announcement of the Prime Minister's resignation, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the country's highest Shiite cleric, called on Parliament, in its Friday sermon, to withdraw its trust in the government. And this in order to avoid the 'Chaos' and more deaths, the day after one of the bloodiest days of protest.
Revered by millions of Shiites in the world, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani remains, at 89, the only authority in the country not yet fully delegitimized in the eyes of protesters. From the first week of the protest, he had called the political class for reforms. Reacting to the announcement of the first victims of the deadly crackdown, he urged the government to respect the "Holiness" Iraqi blood, before calling for further challenge until justice.
Spiral of violence in the South
This weighty support and the political turmoil that it immediately aroused, however, could not stop the spiral of violence that continues in the agricultural and tribal south, where chaos has been threatening since tribal fighters have shown themselves in arms. to protect protesters in Nasiriyah.
On Friday, police again killed seven demonstrators in the area, while an eighth was shot dead by men's sniper fire in front of a party headquarters in Najaf, witnesses and doctors said.
The south of Iraq ignited Thursday with a crackdown by military commanders dispatched by Baghdad who had to retreat into chaos. Forty-six protesters were killed and nearly a thousand people were injured on Thursday, according to doctors and police. Screaming"Iran out! " The consulate of the Iranian neighbor – the great godfather of Iraqi politics – was set on fire on Wednesday in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.
In Al-Diwaniya, in the south, where Friday's rallies took the form of a funeral procession in honor of the forty-six people killed, a protester denounced failing public services, corruption and unemployment among other evils. "Our problem is not the prime minister, we want all parties to emerge! ", he was defeated by AFP.
For, in one of the world's most oil-rich countries, infrastructure is deliquescent and never renovated, while in sixteen years the equivalent of twice the country's gross domestic product (GDP) has evaporated in pockets of politicians and crooked entrepreneurs.
The opposition ready to withdraw its confidence
Already, opposition MPs, former prime minister Haider Al-Abadi and turbulent Moqtada Al-Sadr – the first bloc in Parliament – have said they are ready to withdraw their trust in the cabinet. As for the pro-Iran paramilitaries of Hashd Al-Shaabi, the second largest bloc in the Parliament that had so far strongly supported the government, they seemed to comply with the directives of the Grand Ayatollah. Shortly after his sermon, their coalition, Fatah, argued for "The necessary changes in the interest of Iraq".
But on the streets, protesters do not bother: they want the end of the political system devised by the Americans after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and now under the control of Iran, which took the advantage in a country where one in five people live below the poverty line.
Protesters continue to block schools and administrations, and try to touch the Achilles' heel of power, the black gold. So far, however, they have reached neither the production nor the distribution of oil, the only foreign exchange resource of the country and which represents 90% of the receipts of an over-indebted government.
