Cow, tea, and tents: features from the Sadrists first night inside the parliament
Shafaq News/ Supporters of Iraqi populist leader Moqtada al-Sadr erected tents and prepared for an open-ended sit-in at Iraq's parliament on Sunday, in a move that could prolong political deadlock or plunge the country into fresh violence.
Thousands of the Shi'ite Muslim cleric's loyalists stormed into the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad on Saturday, taking over the empty parliament building for a second time in a week as his Shi'ite rivals, most of them close to Iran, try to form a government.
Al-Sadr supporters can be sleeping on the sideways of the heavily fortified Green Zone. Kiosks scattered along the road offering food to the protestors. A man was seen dragging a cow that will end up in the bellies of demonstrators.
The demonstrators, all of them men, were seen walking on tables of the parliament floor, leafing through folders, sitting in the chairs of politicians and waving Iraqi flags.
One man lit a fire to warm some tea while another offered cigarettes for sale -- all as Iraqi security forces watched on.
In the gardens outside, protesters pitched a large camouflage tent by the entrance as women with children joined other supporters of al-Sadr in setting up camp.
Al-Sadr's social-political Sadrist Movement is demanding that parliament be dissolved and new elections be held and that federal judges be replaced.
The Sadrist Movement came first in an October election as the largest party in parliament, making up around a quarter of its 329 members.
Iran-aligned parties suffered heavy losses at the polls, with the exception of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an arch rival of al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr failed to form a government free of those parties, however, beset by just enough opposition in parliament and federal court rulings that stopped him getting his choice of president and prime minister.
He withdrew his lawmakers from parliament in protests and has since used his masses of mostly impoverished Shi'ite followers to agitate through street protests.
The deadlock marks Iraq's biggest crisis in years. In 2017, Iraqi forces, together with a U.S.-led coalition and Iranian military support, defeated the Sunni Muslim extremist Islamic State group that had taken over a third of Iraq.
Two years later, Iraqis suffering from a lack of jobs and services took to the streets demanding an end to corruption, new e,lections and the removal of all parties - especially the powerful Shi'ite groups - that have run the country since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Sadr continues to ride the wave of popular opposition to his Iran-backed rivals, saying they are corrupt and serve the interests of foreign parties, not Baghdad.
The mercurial cleric, however, maintains a firm grip over large parts of the state, and his Sadrist Movement has long run some of the most corrupt and dysfunctional government departments.
