West of Eden: Green Zone

Tent in the background. Photo by Karim Kadim/AP via Salt Lake Tribune.

Meanwhile, as Tom Friedman was moping in Sulaimaniya waiting for the lithium to kick in, something was, believe it or not, happening in Baghdad, though generally unreported as far as Dr. Google noticed by my usual sources at the New York Times and the Guardian and NPR (I heard about it on BBC), getting going in a big way last Friday, when

Thousands of supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held what they billed as a “joint” Sunni-Shi'ite prayer service Friday outside the main entrances to the government-controlled “Green Zone.”  Sadr has given Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi a Saturday deadline to carry out governmental “reform” and install a new Cabinet composed of technocrats instead of political loyalists. (Voice of America)

Yes, it's the Orson Welles–resembling "renegade cleric", in the Homeric (Simpson?) epithet beloved of the US press of ten or twelve years ago, and the mass Sunni-Shi'a cooperation without which there will be no change for the better in Iraq (as I've been saying for a while now), in a huge effort to force the Abadi government to purge itself. When Abadi failed to meet his deadline on Saturday, Muqtada made his way into the Green Zone, with the assistance of the security forces, to begin a sit-in, ensconced in a tent:

As al-Sadr walked through a checkpoint to enter the Green Zone, officials in charge of the compound's security greeted the cleric with kisses and provided him with a chair. Al-Sadr was accompanied by his personal security detail and the leader of his Shiite militia, Sarayat al-Salam. After he began his sit-in, al-Sadr's supporters started erecting tents and laying down mattresses. (San Francisco Chronicle)

And there he has remained until today, when Abadi (who met with him earlier this week) proposed a new technocratic cabinet to the parliament, more or less on Muqtada's specifications, keeping only the defense and interior ministries as they are (because of the tense security situation) and reducing the total number of ministers from 21 to 16.

Shortly after the parliament session, al-Sadr called on his supporters to end their sit-in, but to continue "peaceful protests in all Iraqi provinces every Friday to put pressure on lawmakers to vote on the new Cabinet."

In a televised speech from his tent erected inside the Green Zone, al-Sadr warned that if the parliament failed to vote, he would pull out his ministers from the Cabinet and call for vote of no confidence in al-Abadi's government. (Sinan Salaheddin/AP, via MySA)

It's anybody's guess, I imagine, where things go from here, but the fact that the prime minister has gone this far in responding to the demonstrations is already astounding to me, like De Gaulle resigning in 1968.

What I want to lay out ahead of time is just this: That the reason it will succeed, if it does, is that the US has nothing to do with it. The US, or Iran (which has always distrusted Muqtada in spite of his being a Shi'ite and perhaps because he has always insisted on an ecumenical politics), or Saudi Arabia and Turkey, or anybody else but Iraqi people, demanding clean government from the bottom up. Which is also the reason why Tom Friedman and the New York Times are unable to see it happening, if it is.