This Week in Iraq: Exports decline; Sadr protest aftermath

National News

Fear, a fatwa, and bloodshed: Inside the battle for Iraq's Green Zone, by Suadad al-Salhy for Middle East Eye

Was last week’s violence planned? Were Sadr and his followers attempting a coup? If so, did the Shia cleric blink before he could follow it through? If it wasn’t a coup, then what on earth just happened?
As the streets were swept for bullet casings and shrapnel, no one could even definitely say who was doing the fighting.
The belief of many opponents and allies of Sadr, as well as observers, is that Sadr had been planning to seize the Green Zone for months, but underestimated the military strength of his opponents deployed in the district.
Several of Sadr's opponents told MEE that the Saraya al-Salam commanders had failed to implement the plan, which they claimed included killing Nouri al-Maliki, the former prime minister and Sadr’s arch-enemy, and striking the headquarters of the Hashd al-Shaabi, the paramilitary umbrella group dominated by Coordination Framework forces.
Yet, the course of events narrated by the key characters from both sides of the conflict, as well as eyewitnesses and officials, suggests a completely different story.

Iraq's top court rejects calls to dissolve Parliament, by Al-Monitor

Iraq's federal court has dismissed a lawsuit calling for the dissolution of the country's legislature, following a request by followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for the judiciary to get involved due to lawmakers' inability to form a government more than 10 months after elections.
The federal court rejected the case, filed by a group of lawyers that included Sadrists, saying the courts lack the authority to interfere in the legislative or executive processes. While the judiciary stressed there was no constitutional basis for such a decision, it encouraged the parliamentarians to carry out their constitutional duties by either forming the government or dissolving parliament.
“The penalty imposed on the House of Representatives for not carrying out its constitutional duties is to dissolve the House when there are justifications for it,” the court ruled.

Climate migrants flee Iraq’s parched rural south, but cities offer no refuge, by Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim for the Washington Post

What happens when the land dries up? The world is facing this question; Iraq is already learning the answers.
First the farmers and the fishermen try to stay. Then, one by one, they reach their breaking point. Migration starts slowly, but the exodus to towns and cities soon swells, and as temperatures rise, so do tensions.
... Embedded in Basra’s troubles is a warning: As hotter, more-crowded cities become the future of a warming world, a lack of preparedness will only exacerbate the discontent already fraying the social fabric.
Climate change in Iraq poisons fertile crescent farmlands
Basra was once one of Iraq’s jewels, a thriving trade hub where the 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta observed: “No place on earth excels it in quantity of palm groves.” More recently, its freshwater canals and elegant walkways drew comparisons to Venice.
But decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 million people the city already houses — let alone the rising tide of newcomers.

Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Arrests to Deter Protest, by Human Rights Watch

Kurdistan regional security forces arrested dozens of journalists, activists, and politicians on August 5 and 6, 2022 in advance of planned protests, Human Rights Watch said today.
... Human Rights Watch has in recent years documented increased targeting of independent media outlets and journalists in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Both federal and Kurdistan Region authorities have used a range of defamation and incitement legal provisions against critics, including journalists, activists, and other dissenting voices.
Rahman Gharib, director of Metro Center, which monitors media freedom in the Kurdistan Region, told Human Rights Watch that the group had identified 78 rights violations by security forces against 60 journalists and media outlets during the arrests. The security forces detained at least 26 journalists, confiscated equipment from 23, and prevented 16 from covering the protests.
“It has become clear to us that the security forces are targeting journalists during protests rather than protecting them,” Rahman said. The security forces “are afraid of camera lenses because they reveal their own illegal behavior.”

First photos of Australian Robert Pether in Iraqi jail raise ‘serious concerns’ about his health, by Christopher Knaus for the Guardian

The Australian government says it holds “serious concerns” for the welfare of Australian engineer Robert Pether as his health deteriorates in a Baghdad jail cell, a process his wife has likened to “watching his murder in slow motion”.
The Guardian has obtained the first photos of Pether since he was arrested and arbitrarily imprisoned in Baghdad in April last year over a business dispute between the Iraqi government and his architecture firm, which was engaged to build a new headquarters for the central bank.
... Pether had already survived skin cancer prior to his imprisonment, and his doctors say local health services are failing to conduct proper tests and have botched the excision of two moles, putting him at severe risk of infection.
“Robert Pether is imprisoned in a 14ft cell with no windows and only one door with [up to] 21 other men,” his doctor wrote in a letter to Australian embassy staff two weeks ago. “To perform surgery on any patient and send them back into that environment is unconscionable.”
... In a report in March, the UN working group on arbitrary detention released a report on Pether’s detention in March, finding it to be arbitrary and a breach of international law.

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