Iraq. Maidan in Tahrir
Traditionally, weekends are a time of hard work for street fighters for all that is good and against all that is bad. Although, of course, each country has its own national flavor.
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For example, in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, crowds filled the country's main square, Tahrir Square, after Friday evening prayers and continued their protests on Saturday. Please do not confuse Baghdad Tahrir with Tahrir in Cairo. This is the same as confusing Lenin Square in Donetsk and Lenin Square in St. Petersburg. The demands of the demonstrators are captivating in their originality: to speed up long-promised reforms and combat corruption in the government.
Surprisingly, these events coincided with information that this most corrupt government is ready to turn to the Russian Federation with a request to bomb the Islamic State in Iraq as well. Iraqi Prime Minister Heidar al-Abadi announced this yesterday. Bashar al-Assad also confirmed this information.
However, one should not rush to conclusions about the nature of the Maidan in Tahrir. The first protests with similar demands were heard at the end of August, i.e. even at a time when preparations for Russian military intervention in the region were underway, hidden from prying eyes. But the most interesting thing is that the ideological inspirer of the Iraqi protests demanding reforms and the fight against corruption was the Shiite religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
This man gained worldwide fame in 2004, when the “Mahdi Army” he created rebelled against the international occupying forces. It was believed that he was the leader of the radical part of the Shiites, the most oriented towards Iran, and it was from there that he drew support.
Over time, al-Sadr moved to the Islamic Republic of Iran, where he lives in the holy city of Qom. The main Shiite militia groups in Iraq, waging an irreconcilable fight against the Islamic State, sometimes using methods that differ little from the methods of supporters of the Caliphate, were formed on the basis of Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
So, apparently, the State Department does not loom behind every Maidan. It seems that Tehran has mastered the classic “manuals”. Not that there is any reason to doubt the extreme degree of corruption of the government there or the slowness of the country’s much-needed reforms. But it’s impossible not to notice that local residents decided that there was no way to tolerate this government at exactly the moment when Russia and Iran finally decided to take IS seriously. Coincidence? Don't think!
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