Iraq’s October uprising was a wake-up call for desperate generations caught in an endless cycle of poverty, marginalization and injustice. How does the struggle continue today?

Nabil Salih

“Iwish to give my life for Iraq and become a martyr,” he told me, smiling, sitting alone on the curb. Next to him was a tent set-up by volunteer medics, tending wounded protesters frantically shipped-in by knackered tuk-tuks throughout the evening. Instead of obsessing on his medical or engineering school application, the soot-covered thin boy who scored an average grade of 94 in high-school fled home to join flocks of livid youth at Baghdad’s Tahrir square, hell-bent on toppling the government.

This was a year ago, at the end of October 2019. It was a bloody night. No breeze blew from the Tigris. Tear gas, blended with sweat and smoke, swept away. The square buzzed with chants, music and shrieks of grief. On the neck of al-Jumhuriya bridge, state executioners deployed stun and gas grenades at the craniums of destitute youth with nothing in hand but the blood-stained tricolor of Iraq.

What happened to that boy?

In 2019, 725 Iraqis attempted suicide, according to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights. In taking their own lives, they escaped the misery of a life marred by myriad challenges – eventually pushing their anguished peers to protests. Little informed journalists who placed the unarmed protesters at the frontlines of “clashes” with security forces – joining state rhetoric in by portraying protesters as saboteurs – extolled a superficial stability under the rule of Adel Abdul Mahdi, the toppled prime minister who oversaw the bloody crackdown.

While they celebrated a partial access for civilian cars to the airport and blast walls coming down as achievements, not obligations, in downtown Baghdad, countless youth and child workers made living pushing handcarts through ramshackle alleys. Unemployed youth, widows and exploited children swarmed at Baghdad’s intersections like ants. They begged for alms, sold tissue packs or bottled drinking water. Meanwhile, in far-flung areas, remnant militants of Islamic State (IS) group continued to wage frequent attacks harming both civilians and security forces.

On the first day of October 2019, the downtrodden gathered on the streets of Baghdad to voice their rejection to the boots treading heavily on the faces of marginalized generations since 2003 – the year many of Iraq’s shipped-in democracy knights rode US tanks rolling into Baghdad to ‘liberate’ it.

Read more from the source: open Democracy