Iraqi protests: Is it aimed to change current regime?

Protest movements sweeping the Arab world have reached Iraq. This week hundreds of Iraqis gathered in several spontaneous demonstrations across Iraq, in the cities of Baghdad, Diwaniya, Basra, Kut, Ramadi, Amara, and other cities. Most of the demonstrations took to the street to protest government corruption and lack of public services. These demonstrations came a day after Iraq s anti-corruption chief said ministers frequently covered up corruption in their departments.

The demonstration in Baghdad’s al-Mutanabi Street which carried banners with slogans like "Baghdad will not be another Kandahar" denounced Islamization the Iraqi society by provincial councils which are controlled by Islamist Shiite parties. Last month, Iraqi security forces raided the premises of the “Writer’s Union” under the pretext that beverages had been sold by its social club. In another demonstration, a group of employees from the Ministry of Industry denounced cuts of their pay which reach 20 percent. In the northern city of Kirkuk, a mixed-ethic city, employees of the state’s North Oil Company protested their deteriorated work conditions and low salaries.
Fifty inmates at a prison in the city of Amara in southern Iraq have begun a hunger strike demanding that the government announce a general amnesty. They claimed they had made confessions under torture. In the capital, around 500 people, mostly lawyers called for the government to put so-called "secret prisons" to scrutiny and give detainees access to legal counsel. Recently, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said that Iraqi security forces operate secret prisons where torture is routine. In April 2010 and January 2011, the Los Angeles Times revealed abuse by Iraqi security forces at prisons under the direct control of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It reported on a secret prison run by the Baghdad Brigade at the Muthanna Airport in Baghdad that held hundreds of Sunnis from Ninewa. Some of the prisoners were apparently tortured, raped, and went through other abuses.

Last weekend, a protest in the southern city of al-Hamza al-Sharqi gathered near a police station to protest shortages of power, food and jobs and corruption. Security officials opened fire on the demonstrators, killing one and wounding four others. Electricity shortages have been the major cause of discontent and protests in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In June last year, thousands of demonstrators took to the street in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, to protest persistent shortages of electricity. The protesters clashed with the police, one person was killed when the police opened fire on the demonstrators, who were throwing rocks at the provincial headquarters in Basra.

In a bid to sooth the growing protests over electricity shortages, on Saturday, February 12th , electricity ministry said that it would subsidize power . Hussein al-Shahristani, Power Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Electricity Minister, promised that Iraqis would receive their first1000KWH-hours of electricity for free each month and consumers who use more than 1,000 KWH will pay for what they use over the exempted amount. But al-Sharistani said that the production capacities will stay below required level needed for next summer.

In response to these protests, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on February 5th, that he would not run for a third term, and that he supported a constitutional limit of two terms to the prime minister, a position which currently has no limit in Iraq. Maliki , announced earlier that he was reducing his salary by a half and that every Iraqi citizen would be provided with 15,000 Dinars (about 12 USD) monthly to make up in the current decrease in food rations.
More demonstrations and disturbances are predicted in other parts of Iraq with the news of the demonstrations widely covered in most of the Arab media especially because several Imams in Iraq denounced in their Friday sermons the government corruption, the growing anger over the Iraqi government’s inability to provide the basic necessities of life and unemployment. Nonetheless, observers think that the Iraqi demonstrations, unlike the ones in Egypt and Tunisia, might not lead to oust the current Iraqi regime for a few reasons: as mentioned earlier, the major demand of the Iraqi protesters is the provision of basic services. Also Iraq has a democratically elected government, though its last elections are said to have been rigged on low scale. Add to that, Iraq has mixed ethic- sectarian population which is represented by parties participated in the political process.

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