Supporters of a firebrand Shia cleric have threatened to paralyse Baghdad unless their anti-corruption demands are met. Thousands stormed the Iraqi elite’s seat of power at the weekend.
Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American former militia commander, promised further protests on Friday after his followers raided the green zone in an unprecedented breach of the heavily-guarded compound.
His protest committee outlined an increasing set of demands including early elections and the resignation of Iraq's president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker. If that failed, they would start “civil disobedience or [a] general strike”, they warned.
The invasion of the green zone marked a dramatic intensification after months of sit-ins and demonstrations by al-Sadr’s supporters, who are demanding an overhaul of the political system put in place by the Americans after the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Protesters blame Iraq’s rampant corruption and terrible public services on a US-imposed sectarian quota system. Created to ensure proper representation of the country's Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, it has instead become a vehicle for political power and patronage in the past decade.
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Those same blocs have fiercely opposed any move toward reform, fearing the dismantling of the very patronage networks that have sustained their wealth and influence for over ten years.
Haider al-Abadi, the prime minister, has tried to replace his party-affiliated cabinet ministers with non-partisan technocrats. On Saturday MPs again failed to reach a quorum to approve the measures, sparking the mass rallies.
Thousands tore down the blast walls of the green zone, an area home to embassies and government buildings that has been off limits to the public since the 2003 invasion. Protesters then raided the parliament, attacking several deputies as well as barring officials from government buildings.
Mr Abadi promised “radical reforms of the political process”. Analysts said, however, that fresh elections were the only way to ensure the end of the crisis without it growing even worse in the coming months.
“There are convicted criminals in the parliament, and people with extremely dubious backgrounds who have gone on camera and proudly admitted to have stolen millions of dollars ,” said Zaid al-Ali, a research fellow at Princeton University.
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“And as summer progresses, things are going to get worse. There are no signs the government will be able to get its act together and deliver on their promises,” he said, citing issues like electricity shortages as a touch paper for further unrest.
Mr Abadi has warned that continued turmoil could scupper the war against the Islamic State terror group, which controls vast areas of northern and western Iraq.
On Sunday Isis carried out a rare a track in Iraq's Shia south, killing at least 33 people with twin suicide car bomb blasts in the city of Samawa, some 145 miles south of Baghdad.
Mr Sadr gained notoriety in the mid 2000s when his Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, violently opposed the US occupation of Iraq.
After the Mehdi Army was disbanded in 2008, Mr Sadr remoulded himself as the mouthpiece for the disenfranchised and the poor. The pro-Sadr bloc Al-Ahrar won 34 seats in parliament in the 2014 election.