The death of the young Safaa al Saray about a month ago came in addition to the hundreds of people that have died in the streets of Baghdad, Najaf and other cities in southern Iraq where thousands of Iraqis, especially young people, have been demonstrating for two months. Safaa Al-Saray was a poet, an activist and blogger who fought for the promotion of civil and political rights in Iraq and participated in anti-corruption protests in 2011, 2013 and 2015. On October 28, 2019, Safaa Al- Saray was hit in the head with a tear gas canister that lodged in his skull while he was taking part in demonstrations in Baghdad. He died as a result of his injuries shortly after. Safaa was 26 years old and he had his whole life ahead of him. Since then, he has become a symbol of this generation that has come out to challenge the government as they no longer tolerate the endemic corruption, denied political rights, the confessionalization of society, the rigidity of social relations and the social pressure that weighs through religious blackmail of the clergy.
For Iraqi youth, the government has committed the irreparable; the protesters have denounced the fact that the police directly target the crowds rather than shoot in the air to disperse the crowds. Videos showed young protesters in Sadr City, a stronghold of Muqtada Al-Sadr’s in eastern Baghdad, under cover, facing uninterrupted bursts of gunfire. In a sign of their desperation, young Iraqis continue to protest despite the violent, sometimes deadly, reaction of security forces considering they have “nothing left to lose” in a country unfairly deprived of the prosperity it should draw from its endless petroleum resources while one in five Iraqis lives below the poverty line.
Protests have already taken place in Iraq, sometimes quite impressively, especially when protesters stormed Parliament in 2016 demanding an end to corruption, a fundamental request of Iraqis for several years. But this time the protests are organized under the digital talent of youth, which could not be coopted by political parties, not even Muqtada Al-Sadr who seems to be also overwhelmed by events and unable to address Iraqi youth who accuse him of betraying their cause.
Exasperated, exhausted and full of disillusionment, the youth who parade the streets of Baghdad, Basra and other cities of Iraq, did not really know the Ba’athist regime and its deprivations that previous generations knew. This generation grew up in a political and social environment where politicians remind them that they do live under a dictatorial regime but the country’s public services and institutions are the worst ranked in the world. Contrary to the claims of the Iraqi government that youth unemployment rates are at 20%, the International Monetary Fund considers that the reality is close to double and it is more corruption and government mismanagement that is the cause than the years of conflict.
Safaa, like the Iraqi youth he symbolizes, lived in a world turned into a village where he sees simultaneously on his mobile screen the young people of New York, Paris and Sydney living with dignity every day, enjoying life, dressing without social pressure, loving their alter ego without meeting a thousand obstacles, traveling and discovering other cultures, learning about the world without prejudices. The digital revolution projected him into a new world to which he did not want to be excluded. This generation cannot travel because no country gives it a visa, they cannot build a social or family life, and unemployment has overwhelmed them. This generation cannot enjoy its youth because it was deprived of everything from simply being able to walk in the city because at any time a bomb can take their life. This generation of Iraqis want to have democratic institutions that take into account the dignity and demands of its citizens. But all they have seen so far is nothing like a normal country. To make matters worse, while they live in a country that has become a state under foreign interference, they are accused of being paid by foreigners when they go out to protest and ask for their rights. The generation of Safaa Al-Saray, as others have reminded us, have no expectations from the generation that governs and so they have no choice but to fight for their dignity. The Iraqi revolution has become the brake that the consciousness of young Iraqis has pressed to stop the descent into carnage that Iraq has been living for almost 40 years.
The current situation in Iraq cannot be improved without the development of a culture politique where non-governmental actors from civil society gain access to the institutions where political decisions are made. Still in a structural perspective of the Iraqi public life, a renewal of the Iraqi ruling class seems an unavoidable datum as long as the generational gap between the youth and the ruling one remains. The gap between these two monde des idées is such that the glance of the current political elite on the world is too old to be able to propose a policy that meets the expectations of young Iraqis.
