The Shadow of Al-Sadr Casts Dark Days in the Green Zone

Jay Ramesh

Baghdad’s “Green Zone” is a 3.9 square-mile area in the heart of the city. It houses several international embassies and government buildings, and it gets its name from being a “safe zone” that the international coalition fortified during the 2003 Iraq war. For the past few months, it has been the site of protests, insurrection, and the graveyard of several civilians. 

The Iraqi government has been in a state of deadlock since October of 2021, when the Iraqi Supreme Court certified that prominent cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr’s nationalist coalition won the largest number of seats in the Council of Representatives (Iraq’s legislature). Their main rivals, the pro-Iran Coordination Framework (CF), disputed the results, and after the election was certified on December 27, 2021, they looked for other, more extreme methods to take power. 

Through intimidation, political pressure, and even attempted assassinations, the CF, with the help of former prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, was eventually able to pressure the Supreme Court to rule that Sadr’s coalition needed a two-thirds majority, rather than the precedent of a simple majority, to elect a president.

The trouble started when, in protest, the Sadrists walked out of parliament, which meant that the vacant seats would go to the runner-up candidate. And as CF candidates were the runners-up in many of these elections, they were able to form a majority in the legislature and attempted to form their own government without the Sadrists, nominating a Maliki-ally, Mohammad Shia al-Sudani for the position of prime minister. 

To block this from happening, Sadr sent his protestors to storm the parliament building inside the Green Zone in late July of 2022. And even though al-Sadr told his supporters to withdraw from the Green Zone (many believe that he used the incident as pressure for a pro-Sadr candidate to be chosen over al-Sudani), the violence did not end there. 

On August 29, 2022, al-Sadr announced that he was officially retiring from politics- causing his supporters to enter the Green Zone once again in protest. A mob stormed the presidential palace, leading to several deaths and a two-day curfew being imposed throughout Baghdad. The violence only ended when, once again, al-Sadr called on his supporters to withdraw from the Green Zone.

In terms of stability, just last year, Iraq’s future looked as bright as it could be given all of the events of the past two years. The Sadrists had won a majority in parliament, and their platform of opposing the US and Iranian influence seemed to be a potential bulwark against sectarian tensions throughout the country. 

However, the political crisis has once again plunged the country into violence and uncertainty. At least 23 protestors were killed and over 300 more were injured during violent clashes with the army from August 29-30, and the more that political violence is legitimized, the more that the legitimacy of Iraqi government institutions is undermined. The country is caught in the middle of the Saudi-Iranian Cold War, and the economic costs of violence could set the country’s development back even further. As oil prices remain at a 9-year high, the opportunity for profiting off of one of the country’s key revenue streams is squandered by the lack of stable institutions to engage in rebuilding, development, and social programs. One can only hope that a peaceful resolution between the Sadrists and the CF can be reached before the country tears itself apart… again.