1. National ambition, divergent vision: Consensus and fracture among Iraqi youth activists of the Tishreen Movement
- Author:
- Sarah Anne Rennick and Adel Bakawan
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
- Abstract:
- Since October 2019, Iraq has been witnessing a mass protest movement, heavily though not exclusively centered in Baghdad and the country’s southern provinces and largely led by youth. This new uprising, referred to as the October Revolution or Tishreen protests, while initially fueled by socioeconomic grievances and the lack of basic services, quickly transformed into a broader political movement calling for radical change to the political order. Rallying around the slogan “we want a homeland,” a hallmark of this new movement has been the effort on the part of activists to put forth a new collective Iraqi identity, moving past sectarian divides and envisioning new state-society relations and a break with the transactional social contract currently in place. Yet despite this overarching vision of national renewal through both radical political reform and reconceived bases of collective belonging, the extent to which the movement actually represents a unified vision for the Iraqi nation and a strategic means by which to renew the State is far from obvious. The radically different political trajectories that the country’s different regions have been on since 2011, and in particular since 2014, have led to important fractures in terms of security, ideology, and power structures at the sub-regional level. As a result, the relationship with and attitudes towards different ideas, forms of collective action, and political and security players vary considerably from region to region. Likewise, the difficulty with which activists can freely meet and move around has meant that exchange and the consolidation of their movement around a unified set of claims has not fully occurred. Indeed, in speaking with youth leaders of the Tishreen movement from various cities across the country,1 what becomes obvious is that while the large lines of national renewal are agreed upon – the need for a new Iraqi identity and new basis for Iraqi nationalism, radical transformation in the practice of power – important points of fracture in their own vision as well as methods for achieving change can be identified. Nonetheless, a shared oppositional consciousness and dedication to the movement itself, as well as underlying and perhaps generationally significant importance assigned to secularism, act as resources for continued mobilization despite repression and strategic impasse.
- Topic:
- Youth, Youth Movement, Consensus, and Activim
- Political Geography:
- Iraq and Middle East