POPULAR ANGER BOILS OVER IN IRAQ

Posting by Mother_Of_The_World, Saturday, February 12, 2011, 15:51:

Hang on a mo’…….Wasn’t the "Liberation" of that country (Iraq), and the establishment of "democracy" supposed lead to a marked diminishing (if not eradication) of those age old problems of widespread poverty; shocking sanitation > infra-structure; high unemployment; institutional corruption, and so on…..?

Clearly a "change" in their Political System, and the granting of "freedom" was not > is not the Key Solution to their national operational problems.

People of Egypt take note!
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Source: World Socialist Web Site

Popular anger boils over in Iraq

Further protests in Algeria, Tunisia and Yemen

By David Walsh
12 February 2011

The eruption of the Egyptian revolution, in the wake of the Tunisian events, is inspiring populations across the Middle East and North Africa.

Protest over social conditions spread to Iraq this week, as demonstrations broke out in numerous cities. Meanwhile, a mass rally has been scheduled in Algiers for Saturday. In Tunisia itself, the population continues to simmer, with the same autocratic power structures still in place despite the flight of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Jordan, Yemen and Morocco are also witnessing protests.

The Iraqi population is beginning to openly register its opposition to the wretched conditions that have been created by eight years of US and allied occupation, as well as bitter sectarian conflict.

Last weekend, protesters stormed government buildings and a police station in Hamza, an impoverished and heavily Shiite community in southern Iraq, to protest shortages of power, food and jobs, as well as political corruption. Security officials allegedly opened fire on the demonstrators, killing one and wounding four others.

The National, from the United Arab Emirates, cited the comment of Abu Ali, who reportedly helped organize the protest: “There will be a revolution of the hungry and the jobless in Iraq, just as there was in Egypt,” he said. “It was a march by the unemployed, by those who have lost hope and who see [Prime Minister] Nouri al Maliki and the new government becoming another dictatorship.”

On February 10, protests of varying sizes took place in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Karbala, Diwaniyah, Kut, Ramadi, Samawah and Amara. In Baghdad’s Sadr City, demonstrators took to the streets to protest the lack of public services, unemployment and government corruption. Public sector employees joined residents in the protest. A group of employees from the Ministry of Industry denounced the decision to cut their pay by 20 percent.

In Karbala, residents also demanded an improvement in municipal services and an investigation into the local government. One protest sign read, “We have nothing. We need everything. Solution: Set ourselves on fire”—a reference to the suicide of a young man that ignited the Tunisian upheaval. In Najaf, farmers demanded greater assistance from the government and the resignation of the head of the local government. Demonstrators in Basra explained that changes in food ration policy had left families unable to buy enough food as prices for basics have nearly doubled in recent months.

One of the largest protests Thursday brought some 3,000 lawyers onto the streets of a Sunni Muslim neighborhood in western Baghdad. They called for an end to judicial corruption and prisoner abuse in Iraq’s prisons. The Canadian Press cited the comment of Kadhim al-Zubaidi, spokesman for Iraq’s lawyers’ union in Baghdad: “This is in solidarity with the Iraqi people.… We want the government to sack the corrupt judges.” He added, “We also demand that the interior and defence ministries allow us to enter the [recently exposed] secret prisons…. We want to get information about these prisons.”

In Karbala, the head of the local lawyers’ guild mocked the pittance the government was giving out monthly in place of rations that included cooking oil, rice, flour and sugar. “We reject this amount of money,” said Rabia al-Masaudi, adding, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), “that MPs were getting paid $11,000 per month, while many of the six million families nationwide who depend on government rations were receiving $12 a month in place of their full supplies.”