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Deaths Mount as Protests Catch Iraqi Government Off Guard

Antigovernment protesters behind a burning barricade in Baghdad on Friday. There have been protests against government corruption, unemployment and a lack of basic services.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

When peaceful protesters poured into the Iraqi streets this past week, demanding an end to widespread government corruption, unemployment and a lack of basic services, the government was caught off guard.

The Iraqi leadership shut down the internet, imposed a curfew, deployed security forces and was largely unapologetic when they opened fire on demonstrators.

Over the past week, the police killed at least 91 people, and had wounded more than 2,000 as of Saturday.

The week’s events — during which tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Baghdad and across southern Iraq — highlighted both the desperation of many Iraqis and the government’s longstanding inability to deliver often-promised basic reforms.

The week was also a reminder that Iraq, which never experienced an Arab Spring-like rebellion of public protest, has security forces trained to deal with terrorism but at a loss for less lethal ways to control crowds.

“I came out to the streets to ask for reform in my country and to find salvation from the mafias who have stolen my country and was greeted brutally by the security forces,” said Ibrahim Ahmed Yusuf, 34, who was wounded in the neck while demonstrating in Tahrir Square in Baghdad.

“We are peaceful protesters, but the security forces treated us with brutality, as if we were animals, not humans demanding our rights,” he said.

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Protesters on Tuesday holding a poster that reads “We are all Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi,” referring to a general whose dismissal helped set off the protests.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

The Iraqi authorities lifted a multiday curfew in Baghdad on Saturday that many antigovernment protesters had ignored. Parliamentary lawmakers met to discuss their demands, while senior Iraqi officials, including the prime minister and Parliament speaker, met with protesters. Nothing was resolved, but some demonstrators said they were willing to continue to talk.

The harsh response by the security services suggested, however, that they had been given leeway by the leadership to take any steps necessary to halt the protests, signaling how ill-prepared the government is to respond to its own citizens’ demands.

There have been protests in Iraq before, and some seemed more violent, including when crowds entered Parliament in 2016 and demanded an end to corruption, a core demand of the protesters now.

This time, however, the protests have come with a broader and deeper sense of the government’s incompetence, and draw support from Iraqi youths, intellectuals and other educated people, as well as from some political parties trying to make the most of it.

Many Iraqis are unemployed, and despite the government’s increased oil revenues and the end of major battles against the Islamic State, not enough money is being put into jobs programs or improving services to make people feel a significant difference in their daily lives.

In a sign of their desperation, Iraqis are continuing to protest despite a more violent, at times deadly, response on the part of the security forces. Protesters have reported instances of the forces firing directly at crowds rather than into the air to disperse them.

“This reflects a broad realization that the system is incapable of reforming itself,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow and director of conflict resolution at the Middle East Institute, which is based in Washington.

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An injured protester being taken to a hospital on Friday. Dozens of protesters have died in clashes.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

“But then what is the path forward?” said Ms. Slim, who was in Iraq recently to meet with people from a variety of backgrounds and political orientations. “I don’t think anyone has a clue.”

The protests, which began last Tuesday, seemed to come out of nowhere, but were apparently set off by a disturbing political event: the removal in September of a highly respected general, Abdul-Wahab Al-Saadi, from the leadership of the counterterrorism command.

General Al-Saadi, who was widely believed to have done a good job in fighting the Islamic State, especially on the difficult battlefields of Mosul and Falluja, was peremptorily removed from his job and assigned to the Ministry of Defense.

General Al-Saadi’s profile — he is a Shiite but not aligned with any party — made him something of an Everyman soldier-hero. His dismissal was explained on the street as linked to his lack of corruption, in contrast to other senior figures, and his refusal to kowtow to the Popular Mobilization Forces, military entities within the Iraqi security forces, some of which have links to Iran.

Whether people knew General Al-Saadi was less important than what he stood for, said Abbas Kadhim, the director of the Iraq Initiative and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who was visiting southern Iraq when the demonstrations started.

“This was just a spark that unleashed all built-up grievances,” he said.

“Many of the grievances are not about Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government,” he added, referring to Iraq’s prime minister. “But when you are the prime minister, you have to pay for your mistakes and those of previous leaders.”

At first, the demonstrations were small, but as the police and security forces responded with violence, they grew and quickly spread. The government made little effort to curb the security forces’ violence, and by Friday the Iraqi Federal Police had warned in a statement that snipers who were not part of the security forces were shooting at both the protesters and the police.

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Iraqi police officers standing guard in front of torched government buildings south of Baghdad on Friday.Credit...Essam Al-Sudani/Reuters

It was unclear whether these were shadowy entities within the Iraqi security establishment or elements linked to political parties or to neighboring countries seeking to promote instability in Iraq.

Caught off guard by the demonstrators, the government at first met the protesters’ anger with silence, allowing repressive actions by the security forces to dominate the narrative. The prime minister, Mr. Mahdi, put a curfew in place, shut down the internet and called in additional police forces. Then he made a brief statement that backed up the security forces.

Only on Friday — as criticism rained down from senior Shiite clerics, the United Nations and rights groups, and the repression seemed to have little effect — did the government begin to reach out to those among the demonstrators whom they called the “peace protesters.”

The Parliament speaker, Mohammed Al-Halbousi, met with representatives of the protesters, offering a laundry list of concessions though it seemed unlikely that the government could deliver on them anytime soon. Mr. Mahdi also met with protesters on Saturday.

The problem is that political parties now smell blood and believe they can topple Mr. Mahdi and gain ground for themselves. Behind the scenes, there are constant meetings.

Already, the leaders of two sizable political parties, Sairoon and Al Hikma, have openly criticized the government and called for reform. The former is led by Moktada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shiite cleric who has been a thorn in the side of whoever has been in charge in Iraqi since 2003.

Mr. al-Sadr called for his bloc to stop participating in Parliament and for the government to resign. If he decides to call his followers to the streets, he has broad influence in Sadr City, a sprawling, largely poor neighborhood of Baghdad that is home to more than a million people, as well as in Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra, and elsewhere in southern Iraq.

Unlike the 2016 protests, when many participants were followers of the cleric, these protests include a cross-section of Iraqis, many without ties to political parties.

Different provinces have different demands, however. The disparate goals that have driven people into the streets mean that, at least for now, there are no clear leaders to negotiate on behalf of the aggrieved.

Falah Hassan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Iraqi Security Forces Kill Dozens in Week of Protest. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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