Angry Planet - What Iraq's Protestors Want and Why it Matters

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Iraq. Since October of last year, a protest movement has taken hold of the country. After 16 years of conflict, Iraq is tired. Its people want political and economic reforms.America didn’t pay attention. Until, that was, a militia stormed an embassy, America killed an Iranian General, and tensions between the U.S. and Iran flared. For a moment, the whole world paid attention.They should keep paying attention.Here to explain why is Rasha Al Aqeedi.Rasha is from the Iraqi city of Mosul. She’s the Managing Editor of Raise Your Voice, an Arabic language platform covering politics and Society in Iraq. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and her research has appeared at George Washington University and in stories by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Associated Press.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. America has a lot less influence than people assume in Iraq. It has not had influence since 2011. On the political process in Iraq, elections, who gets to choose the government, who assigns different roles, this has been 100% in Iranian affair.

And it's been that way since 2011. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt, Iraq. Since October of last year, a protest movement has taken hold of the country. After 16 years of conflict, Iraq is tired. People want political and economic reforms.

America didn't pay attention. Until, that was, a malicious stormed an embassy. America killed an Iranian general and tensions between the U.S. and Iran flared. For a moment, the whole world paid attention. They should keep paying attention. Here to explain why is Russia al-Aqidi. Russia is from the Iraqi city of Mosul. She is the managing editor of Raise Your Voice, an Arabic language platform covering politics and society in Iraq.

Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, and her research has appeared at George Washington University and in stories by the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated press. Russia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having you, Matthew. All right. So we'd like to get, you know, broad stuff here at the beginning, kind of, you know, to get the basics out of the way. So what, how did this protest movement start and what are its roots? So protests in Iraq are not, are not nearly in concept. protests have been, have been in Iraq since 2005, 2006. The first major protest started in 2011. It was sort of an extension of the Arab Spring happening at the time in Egypt and in Syria. Those were different in

that they had more of a middle class sort of appeal. It was against the status quo, but there was no, it was basically against living standards, against bad services, but there was no real clear demands of change at the time. They were also oppressed, but not in the sense that we're seeing today. Then protests started happening around 2014, 15, in Basra in the South, they were sporadic, again, not very aggressive, not very demanding, and they would die out, mostly related to high temperatures, which usually are accompanied with the cut in electricity and running water. So once the weather was sort of cooled down, the protests would kind of die out as well.

What happened in 2018, I believe in Basra in the South, against horrible services, against polluted water that left hundreds of thousands of people sick, that kind of. kind of sparked the movement because that's when the government's reaction, the security apparatus responded with aggressive violence and around six protesters were killed. After that, Basra's tribes were approached by the government and they sort of reconciled and things calmed down. Beginning of 2019, we noticed at Raise Your Voice the platform that I managed, which we tried to focus on positive stories coming out of Iraq, how people are coping, progress that's being made in business, in education, in culture in general, we were struggling to find positive

stories. The standards were so low for what was considered a success story. It was mostly people who had nothing, triumphing on very, very little. And it didn't feel normal to report about, for just one example, two sisters in South Iraq who have to walk nine miles every single day to get to school, and one of them walking back carrying her sandals because she's too tired. And that was considered a success story because it showed perseverance. And it showed more how little the government cared about the South and these areas and how weak the services were. So around May 2019, all the way up to August, small protests began taking place in Baghdad

and in the South. There were 10 to 50 people. Then it began from 50 to 200 people. And they would leave in the evening. And then we saw around August graduate students, people who have master's degree and PhDs who don't have jobs, began protesting, and they convened sit-ins in Tahrir Square. And that lasted for a few weeks. And then towards the end of September, the government, that's when the security apparatus responded. First, it was with hot water cannons.

And this was around the time that General Abdul Wahhab is Saadi, who most Iraqis considered a hero, just to give a brief introduction about him, he was head of the elite counterterrorism forces, services who helped liberate Muslim with at the time minimal civilian casualties. He often displayed characteristics of nationalism. He definitely transcended sectarianism, beloved by all the areas that he helped liberate. he was kind of sidelined and demoted, and that angered a lot of people, because it gave them the sense that this government only seems to reward corruption and not honesty, Iraqis, and people who work hard to serve their countries or war heroes,

in the case of Abdulah, General Saadhi. So there was a lot of accumulated anger. And then on September 29th, there was one particular scene that just went viral on social media. And that's part of what we do on the platform is we monitor social media trends, where specifically Facebook where most of the discussion of Iraqi politics and society happens. Right now there is a migration to Twitter, but before it was strictly Facebook, there was a lot of anger towards one scene, and it was a young woman donning a full hijab, a student, protesting,

and you can see the water tank targeting her directly, and it kind of swooped her away. And that's very offensive in Iraqi culture, especially for people claiming to defend Iraq's honor and whatnot when a woman is targeted. And then they started vowing that October 1st is going to be the beginning of massive protests. Our reporters were there on the ground at the Hedars Square. And up until 2.30, there was around 800 to 2000. I think it was hard for our reporter to exactly know the number. He said, but it's not that massive.

And then while he was on the phone, we started hearing gunshots. And we asked him immediately to evacuate just to leave. He said, no, I want to get some footage. And that's when the first protester fell. I still don't know. I don't think anyone has the idea why that specific moment. That was the government's choice to respond. What provoked a security apparatus at the time was the riot police to shoot a protester in the gut and kill him pretty much on spot?

And then by the end of that day, or by I would say 10 p.m. that day, three protesters were dead. And what happened was the numbers quadrupled all across Iraq when they heard that people were actually dying for protesting. This time, it was Baghdad, Basra, Nassar, Nassar, Nassar. immediately, also thousands and thousands of young men took to the streets, and that lasted all the way up to the 12th. By October 12th, 100 protesters were killed, and the demands started increasing. It was first just against corruption, it was for better services, for job opportunities, then they wanted accountability, then they wanted to know who was targeting them, because there were snipers put place on different buildings, including the now-famous

Turkish restaurants, as they call it, snipers where they're directly targeting these protesters, and tear gas canisters, which are not supposed to be used, targeted at any part of the body, were directly aimed at the head with the intention to kill. This angered the people beyond anything we've seen in Iraq in the last, I would say, 17 years since 2003. The reaction to it, the emotions, and it were just, it was just, unlike anything we've seen before. And the vast majority of the protesters, their ages are between 15 and 25. Of course, we have older. We have protesters now from previous generations.

But it was this defining generation, late, you know, millennials and Generation Z. These were the kids who were protesting. They had nothing to lose. All they've lived is war and poverty and ISIS and militias. And they were very aware of what was around them. These were no longer, you know, a generation that could be fooled by religious or sectarian rhetoric. They were completely disconnected from what the post-2003 political class had designed Iraq to be like. They were completely disconnected from that.

They didn't buy it. It was unconvincing. All they have lived in is corruption and death. And Iraq's staying stagnated. It's almost as Iraq is stuck in time with very little progress compared to any of our neighbors compared to the rest of the world. So there was a two-week break, and it was to observe the religious ceremony and festivities of Ashura. That itself should tell the observers a lot about who's protesting. The fact that they quit the protest for those two weeks to go to walk all the way to Karbala and come back,

it really showed their religious identity. It showed that they were Shia Iraqis. But they were not the Shia Iraqis of 2003. They were not the Shia Iraqis that wanted revenge from others. They were not the Shia Iraqis who played on that sectarian tune. They had reconciled their Iraqi nationalism with their faith. They didn't see any difference. This hugely is due to the fact that there is free speech to some degree in Iraq.

There is a process of democracy since 2003. And these children don't remember the Baoth regime. They don't remember Saddam Hussein. If they do remember, it's what their families used to tell them. And they're looking at how they live now and say, you know what, we're not living in much better circumstances. The one thing the Iraqi government had that was a positive was that it was never oppressive in the way the Ba'ath regime was towards protesting. And now that was gone. Within 12 days, 100 young men were killed brutally.

No one was held accountable. the friends and families of these young men, they wanted revenge now. Now, not revenge in the sense that they wanted to hang anyone, no, as in a as in we want people to hold to be held accountable to this. And many people dismissed October 25 being an actual movement, but went over one million all across the war protested, it was clear that this was, this had turned into a movement. Now, the numbers, they differ. So sometimes you find hundreds of thousands on the streets.

Other times, it's a lot less. but Tehrir Square and the other protest venues in Basra and in Nasalia, they're pretty much packed all day, and they have been this way for over 120 days now. And it escalates sometimes when the numbers are larger. You find the government's security apparatus, the reaction is very, very brutal. Over the past three days, over 10 have been killed so far. I assume the number is actually larger.

We see, again, tear gas canisters being aimed at the head and at the gut. once again, live bullets being used. As for who is actually doing the killing, it's the riot police. In Baghdad, it's the green zone security. And then also masked gunmen completely cladded in black who don't represent a specific security apparatus that we know of. So most likely these are militias. And the same militias, you see them in the South as well. You see them in Nasir, you see them in Basra.

And the more the more this escalated, the protest started taking a very bold sentiment that was overtly against Iran. Now, not against the Iranian people. I need to emphasize this very, very much. Iraqis have absolutely no issue with Iran as a neighbor. It's with the IRGC influence in Iraq. They see that this is definitely IRGC, and IRGC-backed militias who are doing this. And they feel that this influence is extremely negative. It halts Iraq's progress in addition to being very violent towards regular Iraqis,

Iran's or the Islamic Republic of Iran's strategy in maintaining the status quo in Iraq has been extremely deadly for Iraqi people who want to change. So in addition to being overtly critic of Afhamen Ai, of Suleimani, of the Iranian-backed, there were also calls to change the entire system. Now, it's not regime change, and this is a huge difference. Not one of the protesters is calling on the United States to send in more troops and to topple the current government. That's not what anyone wants or any foreign force.

What they do want is that this system, the way it is, the status quo is not working. It's extremely corrupt. And they feel that every single person in the government and parliament has blood on their hands because no one has been held accountable to this moment. They have not exposed who the snipers were. Families have not yet been compensated. And nothing has really been, the demands have not been taken serious.

So there's a lot of anger towards that. And then, of course, the embassy thing happened. So the embassy protests were the only protests, unfortunately, that caught attention in U.S. media, I believe, because people were able to say, oh, look, Iraqis are angry at America. They want them out of their country. And it was really surprising for me to see the vast majority of Americans had no idea that the U.S. actually left Iraq in 2011. And this was a proper embassy as America has embassies all over the world. And the number of troops in Iraq, they came after 2014 to fight ISIS, and there's a security agreement.

No one really seemed to know that. They associated them with the 2003 invasion. And that was the only protest that caught attention, although the ones protesting at the time were openly malicious. They were not even trying to hide it. There was a total of two Iraqi flags in a sea of militia banners and IRGC banners and Hezbollah banners. Right. I think this is an important distinction to make here. But I just want to emphasize it for the audience.

Can you talk about these militias a little bit more and what distinguishes them from the protest movement at large? So the militias, they're mostly part of the Hajd Ashahibi, the popular mobilization units that have been around in Iraq for a while, but were sort of officially given a title after 2014 when ISIS took over Muslim. What happened was there was a play of Sistani's Fatwa. The Sistani's Fatwa particularly said that he encourages young men, the Jihad Fatwa, that he encourages young men to join the security apparatus. us to defend Iraq, and he considered it like an obligatory jihad. He did not say form a new hashid or form popular mobilization forces. He did not say that, but this was one of the many moments where Qasun Soleimani sort of outsmarted him.

And this fatwa, however, it gave sort of a green light to reactivate militias that had been around already, but were operating at a much, much lower level. These were groups that were directly aligned with the IRGC, and they have been since 2006. Mokhah D'Az-Ader, of course, his men also joined, but they had at the time more of Sarai Asaam had more of a national stance. They were directly, they took orders from Muqada, other groups that directly took orders from Sistani. So these formed like the umbrella, they were all under the umbrella of the PMF. So the Iranian backed, the IRC-backed militias, but that of Hes, and

Badr, Qawat Badr, and also the Badr forces and also Asa Aba al-Haq, of course. These were the ones who stormed the embassy. And they stormed the embassy as a retaliation for the U.S. striking a military camp that killed 25 cadets. That air strike a few days

prior to the embassy storming was a bit controversial because it did feel like the United States was sort of settling scores at a time where there needed to be focused on the protest and on reforming and, you know, selecting a new government. And that had not happened yet. So that was a bit of a distraction. Also, some of those killed were extremely young, 21, 22-year-olds, who joined the hashid also for financial reasons. Some of them had been at Tahrir Square protesting just days prior.

So they joined the hashid because they had no other option. and there is some hierarchy that that obligates them to join the ranks of or go through Hezbollah, Qatab Hezbollah camps before. This is something I'm not very familiar with, but some of them, some of the young men who died, the young cadets who died, they really hadn't participated in anything. They had just joined the hashid. So 25 of them were killed in that air strike, which in turn was a retaliation also for Qathebullah, targeting in a base where American troops were in.

killing a U.S. contractor. So when the embassy storming happened because you saw America's flag being burned and writings on the wall that, you know, set down with the United States. And then there are some people, unfortunately, in the United States that find that to be very pleasing, which is a bit surprising. So that was the headline that caught a lot of attention. And it was Iraqi protesters. That's the headlines that we were in Washington Post,

in their first edition. They changed that later. In New York Times, that was the headline that remained. And people had maybe vaguely heard of the protest since October, so now it sounded like Iraqis are protesting against the United States

when that was not the case at all. America has a lot less influence than people assume in Iraq. It has not had influence since 2011. On the political process in Iraq, elections, who gets to choose the government, who assigns different roles, this has been 100% in Iranian affair, and it's been that way since 2011.

America's role has been to help with the fight against ISIS. It's been very consistent in that. The PMF also had a role in fighting ISIS, but it was fighting ISIS while securing IRC interests in the country. It was not just let's fight ISIS for the sake of Iraq or for the sake of even Iranian security. It was we need to fight ISIS at the same time, guarantee that IRC's influence in Iraq is very secured.

So now the protesters were confused. On one hand, they saw militias very easily going into the green zone, approaching the U.S. Embassy with not as much as one bullet shot even at their direction, whereas hundreds of young men were killed by snipers for just approaching the bridge that lead to the green zone. So it seems everyone knew who was in charge here and through the security apparatus. This is another thing I want to highlight. Is that had there been attempts by the protest movement not connected to the militias to get into, there had been, sorry, there had been attempts by the protest movement to get into the green zone prior to the militia getting in, right? And this was when the sniper attacks happened.

Yes, this was in early October. So it wasn't even getting into the green zone. Like, it was just crossing the bridge. So the green zone is separated from the Heir Square by a bridge. I just read Jamhoria that you hear a lot about and just approaching that and that's when they have been that's when they were targeted and it was like direct shots there are plenty of videos that show it

whereas for these other protesters they went into the green zone very easily without any objection there was like this one video of an officer kindly politely asking one of the militia militia protesters here between quotation marks please kind of very very kindly, politely asking him, please move away, please don't do this, I beg you, and he got hit by them, and they pushed him away to the side, and they just entered. So you see here

who has influence and who the green zone security are definitely, definitely afraid of, or who they consider not to be touched with, whereas they were shooting at protesters, the other protesters at ease without even second thought. Just to say it out loud, Iran, right, is what you, is it. is what you're implied? Well, the militias backed by the IRGC, absolutely. Okay. Yeah, keep in mind, this was before Abu Mahdi and Mujah,

and Qasem Suleimani were killed. They were still alive at this point. So it made that that was another thing. So it was clear that these protests were definitely organized by the Hashid. And then we say by the IRGC back Hashid, we definitely mean the higher ranks knew about it. This was not a spontaneous thing. Another thing that we're seeing in Western media right now, it's faded away a little bit, was that, you know, the Iraqi Parliament wants America out and that the protest movement is now mad at America instead of Iran.

What's the truth to that and what are we getting wrong? So the parliament, and this is what I find really funny, is that Iraq voted that the United States needs to leave. First of all, the United States has left already. like I said earlier, there's a security agreement and because of the fight against ISIS. So the vote that happened in the parliament, it did not even meet the basic standards of the quote is necessary to pass.

And we don't have a prime minister. I forgot to mention this early on. Because of the protest, the prime minister, Ad al-Abd Abdel-Mahdi did resign. He is now playing the role of the caretaker prime minister. So legislation is as big as huge as this, They require the prime minister to be present. He is not the prime minister.

That's first of all. And there were not enough people in parliaments, actually, for that vote to pass. In addition to several parliament members coming out days earlier before the vote and saying, we are being threatened and we are receiving death notes on our mobile phone saying that if we don't vote for this, they will kill us or kill our families. So this was not an ordinary vote. This was something very, very exceptional. And it was non-binding in that sense, is that it still has to go through the president's office.

There still has to be a prime minister involved. It was very symbolic in a way. But, of course, the media picked it up. This is a vote against the United States and America has to leave. The protesters, the real protest movement now sort of was in a dilemma. They've never been pro-American in that sense. They've never called for the U.S. to come and, you know, rescue them. It was not like in Hong Kong in a sense where you see American and British flags.

You don't see any of that in Iraq. That was never the case. But now they sort of had to prove that they were not backed by the United States because they said, okay, let's not, they did not want to focus on this. They wanted to focus on their main goals and changing the government, having a new prime minister, early elections, and reforming the Constitution. And that stopped becoming the focus because Muqadah, SADR was now involved and he was threatening to bring out his millions of followers also against the United States.

So they didn't want to be, they were put in a position where they're criticizing Iran. They're not criticizing the United States, whereas Mukhullah Sadr and everyone else sort of is, specifically after the killing of Fassim Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis. So the protests now have said, look, we don't want either. We don't want influence by either. We want this to be an Iraqi affair. We don't want American influence. We don't want Iranian influence either.

and that has that has not really changed the perception on the other side they call iraqi protesters joker and with reference to the actual movie i want to i want to get into that because i think i think that's interesting but can you can you give us the some of the audience may not know who al sada is can you give us the brief the brief bio there yeah so muqtala al sara he comes from a very affluent religious family in Iraq. And he's the remaining son that he's the son that actually has the influence at the moment. He's become, he has this massive followership, an entire neighborhood massive and size named after him.

And in 2006, he took a very, since 2003, sorry, he's taken a very open anti-American position. He doesn't necessarily side with Iran on most things. And he's always portrayed himself as an Iraqi nationalist. But he's been overtly anti-American, and it was his Jayshan Mahdi, the Mahdi army that was responsible for scores of deaths among U.S. troops. And some of the worst militias, like Asa Abha al-Haka and Qa'athezbollah, they sort of all branched out from Jayshan Mehdi. Although he did disown them, it still wasn't, they did not stop their activity. And so Mokad has always been this, they use the word firebrand to describe. I personally disliked that word because for a time he did sort of calm down and he entered politics later on.

He started preaching about reconciliation with Sunnis and with the Kurds. And for a while, he seemed to be quite moderate in a sense. But ever since the protest, he sort of lost that balance because he does feel that the religious institution. And I think this is most of the post-2003 order. they feel that this young generation has a very, very different take on what a Shia identity actually means. And I think that does scare them a bit in what the future might hold where religious institutions have less and less and less influence. Because there is a sense of new defined nationalism where Iraq is above all. And that has not happened, like a pure, authentic Iraqi moment has not happened in the recent history of Iraq.

Iraq has never really had its own moment. even the fall of Saddam Hussein America was involved and everything even with defeating ISIS, for example, Iran and the militias were involved and the destruction of tens of cities and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. I believe the number is close to 100,000 at least. This is kind of, you know, young Iraqis taking their country back and not being afraid to pay the price for it. It's a new sense of nationalism that. Anyone who's been in the position of leadership after 2003 doesn't really seem to comprehend. So, and Muqtada also, he loves relevance. He loves to be in the spotlight.

He loves getting all the attention. So he had to sort of attempt to hijack or be in the spotlight. But noticing that the protests were being overtly anti-Iran and very little mentioning the United States, he intervened. And just in two days, he's announced that his followers are going to protest within the millions. and their demands are not different from these protesters. They also won't change, but it's going to be overtly against the United States presence. So we're still going to monitor how that, how that, you know, kind of turns out, how that plays out on the streets.

Now, what exactly are the concrete goals and demands here? So they first want the appointment of an interim prime minister that is not accused of corruption. has not been involved in the political process post 2003, is not affiliated with any of the current parties, like an independent and that they can approve of. And the first thing that he does is, you know, set a time for early elections. And the protest movement has not been able to present its own leaders

because the few who are suspected of being leaders are being immediately assassinated. And it's kind of frustrating having to repeat this point constantly when talking to activists or talking to other researchers and journalists is that, oh, these protests don't have a leadership movement. So that does mean that they're definitely doomed. Well, the reason they don't have is because they're killing them. So let's find a way to protect these protesters first and its leadership, and then maybe one of them can come forward and something can come out of it. But if people are being kidnapped every single day, assassinated, sometimes in broad daylight.

In addition to the protesters being killed also every day, of course they're not going to declare their leadership anytime soon. But what they do want is an interim prime minister, a new government, and then early elections. And they do want international support with this, for example, like the United Nations monitoring the elections, overseeing how the political process plays out later on. they don't want Iraq to be left alone.

But that does not mean foreign intervention as a let's invite other armies to take people out. Those are the core demands. And then recently, more demands have been added and that's accountability. They want to see people, those who have been killing the protesters brought to justice. That's a core demand.

And I personally think it's a lot wiser that the government does this at this point because the streets are definitely losing patience. The number has now definitely passed 600, and young people are very, very angry. And no one wants to see the protest turn overtly violent, where they do have that aim of revenge. It hasn't gotten there yet. And they've been saying these are peaceful. We're not fighting back.

We're only carrying flags. And we see that in the video. They're being shot with only banners. but at some point they're going to get guns and they're going to defend themselves. Explain why, who is the caretaker prime minister? Why is he only a caretaker? And what kind of political power does he have that differs in any way from a regular prime minister? I know that you'd said that it would have been impossible to pass the resolution to push out the Americans without a real prime minister.

Why is he, why is that different than a caretaker? So the caretaker Prime Minister, Adra Abin Madi, he resigned due to the pressure from the protests. And it's part of the system that a temporary prime minister cannot carry out some of the very important laws, especially those that have that require legislation. That's just part of the Constitution. So he carries out the day-to-day tasks and pretty much everything. else at the lower, more domestic level of things. And I believe also, according to the Constitution, the president should have by now already

formed a new government or chose a new prime minister, but that hasn't happened yet. And every name that's mentioned, every prime minister that is rumored to be the next Prime Minister is immediately rejected by the protesters because they feel it's from the same part. It's the same group. Also has the Da'u and the parties that have been ruling Iraq for a long time, names that are associated with corruption and sectarianism. So that's another problem. I feel that for the time being, there are a few popular names in Iraq. I can mention, I know only one of them, to be honest. The others, it's a strictly Baghdad affair. People are saying, we have nomination, people who are

independent, who we have no problem with, I don't know who they are. The only name that pops to my head is Tha'iq, Sheikh Ali, he's a controversial member of parliament. He has earned himself quite a fan base in Tahrir Square for being very honest. He's very, he's very bold in his statements. He uses

derogatory language sometimes to describe the government, and that's kind of won over the young people. As to how successful he'll be, that's another question. I don't feel that this government's, this current government is willing to give up power anytime soon.

I think they're definitely holding on to it. And if it means that they're, that they give more leverage to the militias to use more force against the protesters, they possibly will do that. So, yeah, Abd al-Abdin Mahdi, he's here, you know, but God knows how long, because there's not really an alternative.

So he cannot carry out just like the major legislations and anything related to sort of foreign affairs, but he can pretty much, he pretty much does everything else. Tell me about Joaquin Phoenix's Joker movie. Okay. So when the movie came out, it was in Baghdad cinema,

around the same time it was the rest of the world. I think the protesters at the time, in those final scenes of the movie, a spoiler alert for people who haven't watched it yet. When, you know, there are cars burning and there was sort of this revolution against the elite and everyone was en masse. I think that kind of, they kind of related with that scene to some extent. So some protesters began photoshopping, the Joker, in Tahrir Square while he's running

away and there are cars, you know, blown up behind him and burn tires and tear gas. And also just the idea of the mask, because they're just the idea of the mask, because They were wearing masks from the tear gas. They also associated the mask somehow with that. And it was basically just anger against the system. They associated the protests sort of with that. And then there was a counter narrative to that. No, this person was not a revolutionary.

He was simply a mentally ill human being who struggled a lot and did not have any medication. So he turned violence into a killer. So then they stopped using his image to represent the protests. But by that time, the other side, you know, the pro-malicious side, the pro-government side had already used that against them, saying you're inspired by an American character against your own country. So now when they say the Joker, it's definitely used in a derogatory way as it's the same thing as calling someone a Zionist or a Freemason. And it's really funny. There was actually this one poster saying that America had first brought in the U.S. US troops to invade Iraq and then in 2014 America created ISIS and now America has created

the Joker as if the Joker is a real person, which is kind of funny, but it's very typical of the militia way of thinking where everyone is the enemy. There has to be always some sort of treason on the other side because if you're not with them, you're definitely a traitor. So that's basically the story. And it's interesting that it's being used in popular discourse. Like it's in mainstream Iraqi television, when they talk about the protesters, they officially say a group of jokers, for example, did this and cut off the road. And you look at them, they're 16, 17, 17 year old Iraqi kids waving Iraqi flags.

There's nothing joker about that at all. But that's how they're describing them, like in mainstream, which is quite an accomplishment for Top Phillips, I think, to be this international. Yeah, it's strange the way that movie has kind of. I don't think people in America realize how well it's doing outside of America and how much it's... Yeah, Lebanon, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's not just Iraq. I'm going to bring in Kevin, my producer here, because he just got back from Iraq, and I wanted to ask him, and he spent time with coalition forces there.

And I wanted to ask him how, Kevin, how do the coalition forces see these protest movements and what did they tell you? What have their opinions been? Well, obviously, officially, the coalition has no opinion on that, and the Iraqis have their rights and should be respected as such. Off the record, I got a range of opinions, I think, from people, because obviously this is something that they're kind of caught in the middle of. It was interesting when this whole thing started. The initial thing that they said immediately was, we have the right to defend ourselves, because I think they were a little bit unsure. how the protesters were going to relate to them, especially when they started trying to get to the green zone.

I think one of the questions was, are we a target here? Now that I think they realize that they're not a target, they have a range of opinions. Definitely among some of the enlisted guys, I kind of heard some kind of off-the-cuff talk about how they're actually very impressed with them. like it's obviously not an official government position,

but their personal opinion is they think it's really cool that these young people are fighting for their rights. How, you know, that's something that, and some of the older enlisted guys who'd had multiple tours said, you know, finally, this is kind of what we would have liked to see these young people do. We would like to see them have some sort of democratic life, regardless of whether we did it or somebody did it. Higher up the chain, I think there's a little bit of, well, there's certainly some

Schadenfreude and looking at seeing the Iranian project get a lot of trouble and seeing this sort of anti-Iranian sentiment and not being the center of it. But there's also some concern about where this could go if things were to get violent, if this were to turn into a new civil war or things were to collapse while American troops are in the middle of it, that's something that's on their minds and frightens them a little bit. But ultimately, it's just their big thinking really has been, they just want to focus on the anti-ISIS mission. That's really been the opinion that I get from a lot of people. and they've been watching this, but ultimately they want to stay out of it as much as possible and let Iraqis sort it out, which I don't think is what a lot of people would believe American troops feel about it, but that's definitely the strong impression they got and sometimes explicitly what people told me. I think it speaks to that misperception that we've kind of broken down this episode.

And Kevin, you even got on to me a little bit in the show. show notes before the show started that, as Russia said, like, America is not occupying the country currently. It's not the nature of the military presence there, right? But, all right, I've got one more question. If you've got the time, Russia. So, Soleimani's dead. Did you ever think you would be looking at the Middle East without him? And how does it change things? Oh, absolutely not. When we're asked sort of in our field of work to give an outlook on something

for the past four or five years, it's always been okay, this will happen, this might happen, but what would Qasem Soleimani think of this? What would his position be on this? And he's sort of the first person we would consider because he's been obviously very

influential in calling the shots in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Syria, obviously where his impact has been perhaps the most devastating. So, yeah, when I got that call and it was very shocking. I didn't believe it until I heard it from the Iranian agencies when they confirmed that he was indeed killed. What does it mean?

It leaves a lot of room for revenge. It leaves the IRGC in a position where it still wants to be obviously viewed and feared and not perceived as weak. I don't believe their reaction towards the United States so far has been satisfactory for them or their followers. But the militias have been even so far, the reaction or the revenge that they claimed has been quite tamed. But there is still a lot of room for revenge.

And I fear that this revenge will be taken out on Iraqi protesters more because Suley Mani's project at the end of the day in Iraq was to maintain the status quo as it is, prevents any positive change in the country, sort of manage Iraq as it is basically, managing rebel, as I prefer calling it, where the country is barely functioning, but it doesn't function outside of sort of the Iranian sphere. And at the end of the day, the main goal was also to expel the U.S. troops. And the remaining troops of the United States, where even the anti-IS campaign is a pure IRGC affair,

in the country, managed by the militias and other security apparatus. How that's going to play out, it depends also. It's highly related on how this government decides to act towards the protest. If they want to remain in power, which is what I'm seeing, excessive violence may be used against the protesters, and this government, therefore, concedes further to the militias, offers them more power, more immunity, and that definitely does not play out well for Iraq, but it might assure the IRGC sort of influence and leverage for a longer term. Today in Lebanon, I think I don't follow that close enough, but with the new government there,

I believe Hezbollah is also in a secure place. So it doesn't mean a lot has changed in terms of how the IRGC operates, but they definitely lost an extremely charismatic character that is going to be impossible to replace. There was an aura about Suleimani that I don't say this in a positive way, or praising him, obviously, but that's going to be hard to replace. And we have to also look into how the militias here, Iraqi militias, respond to the IRGC after his death and Suleiman and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis after their deaths, how they respond to it.

Will they follow the new leadership in the same way? Those two are extremely charismatic, and people, their followers genuinely love them. So will they be able to, will that be replaced? I don't believe that will be easy to achieve. As for the escalation with the United States, I think we're pretty much past it. I think most of it is already done. I don't see escalation happening anytime soon, at least towards the U.S. bases. I mean, there were, you know, Katusha shots, strikes at the green zone, but beyond that,

it's not going to be anything too serious. I think also the RRGC is going to recalculate its steps because they see now America is responding back in quite an aggressive way with... very little to stop it. That was not the scenario before where they could kidnap, they could escalate without really without any repercussion, but that's not the situation anymore. So they're definitely also recalculating. And it's been a tough, a tough month or so for Iran, I believe, extremely tough month with everything that's going on there. So it's just, it's, it's, it's anyone's guess how the IRGC decides to play it out in Iraq.

But my guess is that it would definitely attempt to preserve the status quo, which means further crack down on the protesters. Rochelle Al-Qaeda. Thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through this complicated but important topic. Thank you so much, Matthew. That's all for this week, War College listeners. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Kevin Nodell.

It is a creation of myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, please follow us on Twitter at War underscore College. I am at MJG, AULT on Twitter, and Kevin is at KJK Nodell. We will be back next week with more stories from behind the front lines. Stay safe until then.