Iraq’s Facebook revolution, already hijacked

Unlike the rev­o­lu­tions in Egypt,Tunisia and despite the “hum­ble” demands of social jus­tice, human rights, pro­vide jobs and raise the stan­dard of liv­ing issued by the pro­tes­tors. The Valentine’s (Day of Love as it called in many Arab coun­tries) demon­stra­tion in Iraq started with the arrest of the head of the Prepara­tory Com­mit­tee of the demon­stra­tion “Uday Al-Zaidi” (one of few inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions … not “blessed” by the cler­ics or polit­i­cal par­ties) taken to an unknown place [image above of the state­ment released by the Pop­u­lar Move­ment to Save Iraq regard­ing Al-Zaidi arrest].

The few hun­dreds attended these demon­stra­tions man­aged to “embar­rass” Maliki’s gov­ern­ment and forced it to issue 5 “worth­less” res­o­lu­tions in one week to calm the pro­tester (the Sadrists argue that Maliki’s deci­sion to cut his salary to the half is noth­ing com­pared to his monthly $1 Mil­lion “social ben­e­fits”). Yet the dif­fer­ences between the Egyptian-Tunisian and the Iraqi demon­stra­tions are:

1– The Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion is pure Egypt­ian, has sur­prised the whole world, includ­ing the U.S. and all Euro­pean coun­tries, while Iraq is a hub for regional inter­ests any rev­o­lu­tion is obliged to be accepted and approved by the U.S., Iran, Syr­ian, Turkey and Saudi Ara­bia, to fit their agendas.

2– Egypt­ian peo­ple regarded the army as the state’s army and not Mubarak’s army, which gave the army lead­ers the oppor­tu­nity to join the mass upris­ing (or at least to stay neu­tral). In Iraq, the army, police and all the secu­rity insti­tu­tions are already infil­trated by mili­tia mem­bers loyal to dif­fer­ent par­ties, politi­cians and clerics.

3– The Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion man­aged to sur­prise and con­tain all tra­di­tional Egypt­ian par­ties and polit­i­cal group­ings, pre­vent­ing them from dom­i­nat­ing the upris­ing, forc­ing them to par­tic­i­pate as fol­low­ers and not lead­ers. In Iraq the upris­ing is already hijacked by par­ties, politi­cians and cler­ics before it gets started. This is Muq­tada Al-Sadr’s state­ment for the sup­port of the demon­stra­tions, saying:

I know that even if the Gov. accepts your demands, they can’t imple­ment them for sev­eral rea­sons such as the weak­ness of the Gov., the pres­ence of the occu­pa­tion and the wide spread of corruption.

As if the Move­ment is not an essen­tial part of the gov­ern­ment, the Sadrists will use these demon­stra­tions against Maliki, after the lat­ter failed to ful­fill his promises to appoint some of the Sadrist Movement’s mem­bers as gov­er­nors in Maysan and Basra, Diwaniyah provinces. Posi­tions are occu­pied by Maliki’s Dawa party mem­bers (see also The Sadr Move­ment con­demns the arrests cam­paign car­ried out by the Gov. against its fol­lower … Al-Hayat 02-02-2011).

Con­tra­dic­tory, incon­sis­tent deals between Maliki and Al-Sadr, Maliki and Ammar Al-Hakim, Maliki and the Kurds, Maliki and the Amer­i­cans lead to this dead­lock explains why the Iraqi gov­ern­ment is always in a state of con­flict and com­pe­ti­tion (such as Maliki’s agree­ment with Asaib Al-Haq to bal­ance the Sadrists strength in the street … ended up with the last wave of assas­si­na­tions) ignor­ing and fail­ing to pro­vide basic ser­vices to the peo­ple and ful­fill its pre-election promises.