Photo courtesy Charles Miller strong>Patrick Cockburn is currently Middle East correspondent for the Independent, writes regularly for the London Review of Books and worked previously for the Financial Times. His books on war and peace in the Middle East include The Age of Jihad, The Rise of Islamic State, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Struggle for Iraq, The Occupation, as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy and, with his son Henry, a book on schizophrenia, Henry’s Demons, which was a finalist for the Costa Award. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, the Foreign Commentator of the Year in 2013, and the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award 2014.

TAHRIR SQUARE, BAGHDAD

I was in Baghdad on the evening of 1 October 2019, staying at the Baghdad Hotel near Tahrir Square in the city centre. I was planning to visit Diyala governorate, north of Baghdad, the following day. The area had once been an Isis stronghold, and I wanted to see whether it was making a comeback. From my hotel I heard the distant sound of shots. They could have been in celebration of a wedding, or victory in a football match, but the gunfire went on too long for those things to make sense, so I went down to the lobby to find out what was happening. As I reached the front door a man came in from the street to say that the security services were shooting at protesters; ten of them had been killed. Later in the evening, I got in touch with a doctor at Medical City, a hospital complex not far from Tahrir Square, who said that ten dead was an underestimate and that he himself had seen four bodies. Meanwhile, the government was claiming a death toll of one.

Nobody had been expecting violence. By Baghdad standards it was a small protest-some 3,000 people on the streets-and it was motivated by social and economic issues: unemployment, government corruption, and inadequate electricity and water supply. I had been told about it the previous day by a group of young men demonstrating opposite the foreign ministry, where they were demanding jobs appropriate to their status as university graduates. They said they had been camped out there for forty-three days and were intending to go to the rally in Tahrir Square, but they didn't seem to be expecting trouble. Street protests have become a familiar part of Iraqi politics over the last few years. In 2016, demonstrators broke into the Green Zone and ransacked parliament and the prime minister's office. Last year in Basra, protests over water and electricity shortages led to the setting ablaze of government and party offices, though only twelve people were reported killed.

Last month in Baghdad, the response of the security forces was very different. And, as it turned out, not only of the security forces: also patrolling the streets were the pro-Iranian factions of the predominantly Shia paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Units. When the protesters tried to cross the al-Jumhuriya bridge leading from Tahrir Square towards the Green Zone, they were met with live fire.

Photo courtesy Charles Miller strong>Patrick Cockburn is currently Middle East correspondent for the Independent, writes regularly for the London Review of Books and worked previously for the Financial Times. His books on war and peace in the Middle East include The Age of Jihad, The Rise of Islamic State, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Struggle for Iraq, The Occupation, as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy and, with his son Henry, a book on schizophrenia, Henry’s Demons, which was a finalist for the Costa Award. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, the Foreign Commentator of the Year in 2013, and the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award 2014.

TAHRIR SQUARE, BAGHDAD

I was in Baghdad on the evening of 1 October 2019, staying at the Baghdad Hotel near Tahrir Square in the city centre. I was planning to visit Diyala governorate, north of Baghdad, the following day. The area had once been an Isis stronghold, and I wanted to see whether it was making a comeback. From my hotel I heard the distant sound of shots. They could have been in celebration of a wedding, or victory in a football match, but the gunfire went on too long for those things to make sense, so I went down to the lobby to find out what was happening. As I reached the front door a man came in from the street to say that the security services were shooting at protesters; ten of them had been killed. Later in the evening, I got in touch with a doctor at Medical City, a hospital complex not far from Tahrir Square, who said that ten dead was an underestimate and that he himself had seen four bodies. Meanwhile, the government was claiming a death toll of one.

Nobody had been expecting violence. By Baghdad standards it was a small protest-some 3,000 people on the streets-and it was motivated by social and economic issues: unemployment, government corruption, and inadequate electricity and water supply. I had been told about it the previous day by a group of young men demonstrating opposite the foreign ministry, where they were demanding jobs appropriate to their status as university graduates. They said they had been camped out there for forty-three days and were intending to go to the rally in Tahrir Square, but they didn't seem to be expecting trouble. Street protests have become a familiar part of Iraqi politics over the last few years. In 2016, demonstrators broke into the Green Zone and ransacked parliament and the prime minister's office. Last year in Basra, protests over water and electricity shortages led to the setting ablaze of government and party offices, though only twelve people were reported killed.

Last month in Baghdad, the response of the security forces was very different. And, as it turned out, not only of the security forces: also patrolling the streets were the pro-Iranian factions of the predominantly Shia paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Units. When the protesters tried to cross the al-Jumhuriya bridge leading from Tahrir Square towards the Green Zone, they were met with live fire.