Riot police stand in front of protesters during a demonstration against poor services and corruption in Baghdad yesterday.

Abadi directs military commanders to ease civilian access to the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district home to many government buildings and several Western embassies

Agencies
Baghdad


Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi yesterday ordered security forces to ease access to Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and main streets, in an apparent bid to improve daily life for ordinary Iraqis as the country braces for fresh protests.
The capital and many southern cities have witnessed demonstrations in recent weeks calling for provision of basic services, the trial of corrupt politicians, and the shakeup of a system riddled with graft and incompetence.
Thousands of people were heading to join yesterday’s protests following a call from powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Security forces deployed in force to prevent violence, which has been limited in past weeks.
Partly in response to the protests, Abadi is pushing reforms to a system he says has deprived Iraqis of basic services and undermined the fight against Islamic State militants.
He has announced several measures this month to combat corruption and mismanagement including scrapping layers of senior government posts, cutting security details and other perks for officials, and encouraging corruption investigations.
Yesterday, he directed military commanders to ease civilian access to the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district home to many government buildings and several Western embassies.
The 10sq km area on the bank of the Tigris River once housed the headquarters of the US occupation and before that one of Saddam Hussain’s republican palaces.
Checkpoints and concrete barriers have blocked bridges and highways leading to the neighbourhood for years, symbolising the disconnect between Iraq’s leadership and its people and wreaking havoc on traffic in the city of 7mn people.
The Green Zone is surrounded by high concrete walls, guarded by labyrinths of successive checkpoints and protected by Abrams tanks, armoured personnel carriers and elite members of the security forces.
Easy entry requires going through a byzantine process to obtain necessary badges that has itself been said to be a source of graft, with large payments reportedly expediting the procedures.
Abadi also ordered the elimination of no-go zones set up by militias and political parties in Baghdad and other cities in response to more than a decade of car bombings.
But yesterday’s edicts showed that security remained a high priority. Abadi called for a plan “to protect civilians ... from being targeted by terrorism”, according to online statements, but did not identify specific measures or a timeline.
Bomb attacks, many of them claimed by Islamic State, continue to strike the Iraqi capital. At least six people were killed yesterday morning in a car bomb attack in the southern district of Zafaraniyah, police and medical sources said.
Abadi pledged in November to remove concrete barriers from the capital, but movement in many areas remains constrained by the blast walls. He has managed to reduce the army’s security role in the city and lifted a nighttime curfew.
Abadi also ordered yesterday the formation of a legal committee to review the ownership of state properties and return illegally gained assets to the state. Critics say some officials have abused their authority to appropriate state-owned properties for personal use.
Both opening the streets and efforts to recover ill-gotten state assets are almost certain to face major resistance from politicians across the political spectrum who have benefited from both.
Top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who wields authority few Iraqi politicians would openly challenge, has called on Abadi to “strike with an iron fist” against corruption.
Yesterday, he cautioned protesters against letting personal goals distract from their demands while urging politicians to provide tangible results of reform measures.
“The citizens have tried previous promises and found nothing in reality that would solve the problems they have suffered from for so long. They saw that these promises were only aimed at temporarily relieving their suffering,” Sistani said in a sermon delivered by a spokesman.
The provincial governors of Muthanna and Qadisiya, in Iraq’s oil-producing south, offered to resign yesterday, local officials said, following allegations of administrative and financial wrongdoing. It was not immediately clear when they would leave their posts.