Since 2015 Iraq has been experiencing an unprecedented movement of popular protests that is mobilising a whole generation of its youth, demanding a radical change of regime. Based on recent fieldwork with women, civil society and youth organisations and networks, I explore the Iraqi protests in the light of new theorisations of contemporary civil society and social movements. What I find is that the notion of madaniyya claimed by Iraqi protesters is not only an expression of a ‘post-Islamist’ political moment but it is structured by the traumatic experience of sectarian violence. For Iraqi youth, the demands for social justice and economic redistribution cannot be separated from the claim for sectarian equality and religious freedom: both demands are experienced as matters of life and death.
A new civil society?
My research engages with Gready and Robins’ concept of a ‘new civil society’ and Islah Jad’s critique of the ‘NGOization’ of social movements in the Arab region. For them, conceptions of civil society are often reduced to the human rights NGOs’ understanding of transitional justice in theory and practice. If civil society is understood as the sphere outside of the state and the economic market, for Gready and Robins, the difference between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ civil society lies in the relationship to the state and its institutions: ‘old civil society’ privileges advocacy, support and capacity building, with the state and state institutions as the main point of reference while ‘new civil society’ insists on autonomy and independence from the state. The ‘new civil society’ refers to forms of actions and protests, and in the Iraqi case this is manifested through a rejection of sectarianism and identity-based politics.
Earlier protests took place in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in 2011 in the context of the Arab Spring, and the Iraqi protests of 2015 carried transformative and influential dimensions. Demonstrations started from tens of thousands of protesters in July 2015, carrying on every Friday to reach almost one million. Under slogans such as Bis mil-din baguna al-haramiya -in the name of religion we were robbed by looters- protesters denounced the ethno-sectarian political system established through the US invasion and occupation of 2003. They question the entire religious political elite, and denounce institutionalised and generalised corruption, the lack of basic services such as electricity, water, the absence of functioning health and education infrastructures as well as endemic unemployment. Protests spread all over the country and continued for over five months with actions such as sit-ins at the entrance of Baghdad’s Green Zone and Iraqi Parliament.
