Sadr calls for protest arrests after new prime minister appointed

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday called for Iraq’s security forces to arrest protesters blocking major roads in Baghdad and other cities. He also urged the education ministry to punish students and teachers who are out on strike.

The influential cleric’s call comes a day after Iraq’s President Barham Salih officially appointed Mohammad Tawfiq Allawi as prime minister and tasked him with forming a new cabinet.

Adil Abdul-Mahdi had been acting as caretaker prime minister since nationwide protests forced him to resign late last year.

However, anti-government protesters occupying public squares, bridges, and highways across southern and central Iraq rejected Allawi before the former minister of communications’ candidacy was even officially announced.

Sadr, head of the Iraqi parliament’s powerful Sayirun bloc, urged security forces to detain anyone found blocking major roads. 

In a tweet on Sunday, he also told the education ministry to “punish” teachers and students taking strike action. 

“Based on the Ayatollah [Ali al-Sistani]’s guidance, we need to bring back the revolution to its original track,” Sadr said.

“I have to combine the ‘blue hats’ with the security forces and the educational departments in the provinces with tribal leaders in order to open roads and resume schools and universities.”

The blue hats are well organized and well equipped Sadrists who joined the protests to protect them from attack by armed groups.

These Sadrists withdrew from Tahrir Square and other protest epicenters after the cleric issued a tweet last week ordering them to leave.  

The move paved the way for security forces and armed groups to attack the protesters in Baghdad and other provinces and to burn their tents.

Many of the protesters branded Sadr a traitor who had used their movement for his own political gain and to further the interests of Iran and its Iraqi proxies.

“Sadr does not represent the nation, and what he is doing is only for his own interests,” Saif, a 26-year-old protester from Nasiriyah told Rudaw English on Sunday.

Sadr then appeared to change his mind, calling on his supporters to rejoin the movement on Friday.

His vacillating stance means the Sadrists and the bulk of the movement do not make easy bedfellows.

Sadr and his supporters in Tahrir Square clearly support Allawi’s appointment, while the bulk of the movement appears to reject him as a tool of the same political parties they hope to dislodge from power.

In a tweet on Saturday, Sadr claimed Allawi was the favored choice of the protesters and the Iraqi people – not the choice of the Shiite political parties.

Now that a new government is being assembled, Sunday’s tweet indicates Sadr is trying to wrap up the months-long protest – by force if necessary.

Young Iraqis have been marching in the streets of the nation’s southern and central cities since October 2019 to protest the lack of basic services, rampant corruption, and high unemployment.

The protests have grown in intensity with widespread demands for the overthrow of the post-2003 political order.

More than 600 people have been killed and around 18,000 injured in clashes between protesters, security forces, and pro-Iran militias since the unrest began in October, according to Amnesty International.