Sadr and Us: The Lost Partnership ‘Ali Wajih, originally published by Nas News 03 Feb 2020 In this moment, with the continuing tensions between the Blue Hats (a formation belonging to the Sadrist trend) and the other protesters, the leader of the trend – Muqtada al-Sadr – has closed down all spaces for cooperation between
Below is a map showing targeted violence against protest activists and journalists covering the protests across south Iraq since October 2019. This was compiled by @benrobinz and @IqanAlkhassaf based on continuous monitoring of protest activity and security incidents across Basra, al-Diwaniyah, Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Maysan only. For full functionality, click “show large map” at
Below is a map of protest activity across south Iraq so far in January. Created by Ben Robin @Benrobinz and Iqan Alkhassaf @IqanAlkhassaf this map will be updated daily throughout the month. Click “view large map” in the top right of the embedded map to open it up for full functionality. Live Map: January 2020 Protests Across South
Below is a map of protest activity across south Iraq so far in November. With help from Iqan Alkhassaf, this map will be updated daily throughout the month. Live Map: November 2019 Protests Across South Iraq
This is February’s edition of my south Iraq SIGACT monitoring report covering the provinces of Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Muthanna. I recorded 75 total incidents in February, up from 61 in January. This has been due largely to a spike in protest activity, particularly linked to the health sector (55 protest events were recorded
This is January’s edition of my south Iraq SIGACT monitoring report covering the provinces of Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Muthanna. I recorded 61 total incidents in January, down slightly from last month. However, the levels of violence (aggregating serious violent incidents and tribal fighting) rose to 37 compared with 32 in December. Criminal violence
This is December’s edition of my south Iraq SIGACT monitoring report covering the provinces of Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar, and Muthanna. December has seen a further uptick in activity across several categories. Monitoring captured a total of 88 incidents (up from 66 in November and from 42 in October). Of particular note in December was a spate of incidents
This is August’s edition of my south Iraq SIGACT monitoring report. August saw a reduction in the rates of protest compared with July, but there was a renewed explosion of activity towards the end of the month and continuing into September. Monitoring captured 84 total incidents, down from 118 in July. Of these, 60 were
This is July’s edition of my south Iraq SIGACT monitoring and analysis report. July saw an explosion in the rate and scale of protest activity across the south. Provincial council buildings were stormed in several provinces, and the offices of political parties and militias were also attacked. Monitoring captured a total of 118 incidents of
Below is a link to a blog piece I wrote for LSE’s Middle East Centre on the protests which swept Iraq’s southern provinces in July 2018. Link to LSE MEC blog article.
