Protest in Iraq: Fire storm and civic

The shops are open. People are on the streets, the traffic is as usual, at the main intersections police officers are standing in their antiquated uniforms. Life in Nassriya, the second largest city in southern Iraq, goes its usual, quiet pace.

This would not be worth mentioning if a local gas station owner did not casually mention that an angry crowd burned down the seat of the provincial government three weeks ago. And all the party offices in the city. All operational centers of the militia. The houses of several members of parliament as well as the residence of the head of the cabinet of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mehdi in a suburb of Nassriya.

The paramilitaries of the "anti-rebellion police" had agreed after several hours of fighting on their peaceful withdrawal from the city.

The Iraqi state has disappeared from Nassriya until further notice. The local police are the last uniformed government order. A big city in a vacuum.

But what happens next? Where did this sudden outburst of violence come from? And even more unusual for Iraq and its history of brutality: what just brought it to a stop?

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Anwar, as the gas station owner prefers to imagine without his surname, was apolitical until October - not out of indifference but out of frustration: "What we've experienced over the last decade and a half was a government that always wanted more money from us and always The electricity prices are rising, but there is only electricity every few hours, we have to pay a road tax, but nobody fills the potholes, even the university registration form costs much more than it used to, but the graduates can not find jobs. "

No sources of income in Nassriya - no oil, no harbor or tourism

The situation has become worse elsewhere too. But nowhere as bad as in Nassriya, capital of the poorest province of Iraq. Other provinces have oil wells, a harbor, a land border with customs, Shiite shrines, to which millions of believers from all over the world make pilgrimages and spend money there.

Nassriya has none of this. For a long time it was still quiet here. At least quieter than in Baghdad, in the middle and in the north of the country, where the "Islamic State", in 2014 made its lightning triumph and was then fought back for years; where the civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims had kept people in fear for years.

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Not so in the South: Here, almost all Shiites live in Iraq, who make up the majority of Iraq's population and have long remained loyal to the shifting Shi'ite governments in Baghdad. In the poisoned political climate of the country they were never suspected to be terror sympathizers of the Sunni IS. But the powerful of the ruling parties have thanked them badly: The gigantic oil wealth of Iraq arrived less and less among the subjects.

At the beginning of October, Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the integrity-adored army commander, was relieved of his post in Baghdad, whose "Golden Division" had a significant share in the liberation of Mosul from the IS. That was the spark to explode the pent-up anger for years. Saadi had nothing to do with Nassriya, but it did not matter. After the first peaceful demonstrations, whose demands were dismissed by the government, demonstrators from 25 October in Baghdad and other cities put crossing points, bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris lame, called for a general strike.

The wrath of the Iraqis reaches the henchmen of Tehran today

Christoph Reuter / DER SPIEGEL

Lawyer Nedda Saleh (center) "I encourage my daughter!"

It remained in Baghdad. Not so in Nassriya. A crowd, some of whom say there were about 2,000 mostly young men, set out to storm the headquarters of those institutions that are blamed for the country's demise.

First of all, the headquarters of the militias, who in recent years have performed like a state in the state and who are ultimately under the command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen. Under the banner of the common Shiite faith, they are tools of Iranian power. And just as the anger of the Iraqis hit the American beaters in 2004, today he reaches the henchmen of Tehran.

Within a few nights, their previously inviolable command posts go up in flames, the fighters of the "Khorazan Brigade" evacuate their building. Then it hits the centers of the parties, which like a cartel to assign orders and posts, no matter who is currently governing, finally the seat of the provincial council and individual villas of commanders, members of parliament, the head of office of Premier Mehdi.

Hospitals, schools, garbage collection, the actual administration remain untouched, are partially protected from any looters.

According to a list of protesters, more than 40 buildings are being torched. Ten of them were inspected by the SPIEGEL team, all burned out, some destroyed.

According to Iraqi experience, this would be the prelude to civil war. When the Shiites rose in March 1991 against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, he had the resistance shoot-out of helicopters and elite units shoot together, killing tens of thousands, probably more than 100,000 people.

But strange things happen this time. The commander of the eponymous militia and party Badr, Said Dzhabbar, has been ordered from Baghdad to hold his bastion at all costs. His son shoots into the crowd, killing four demonstrators, injuring dozens. The other fighters shoot in the air or not at all.

As killing does not scare most of the militias flee

Christoph Reuter / DER SPIEGEL

Graffiti of students in the city: "Every dead has its price"

And when the crowd does not retreat after four dead, but continues to swell, flew Jabbar's son and the others. They have enough weapons and ammunition to massacre hundreds. They do not do it. It is true that more than 30 people died in and around Nassriya during the last days of October. But after killing does not stir up fear, only counter-resistance, most of the militia escapes from the city.

"Times have changed," says Ahmed Tamimi, elementary school principal, one of the voices of the Nassriya protest movement: "Today, every dead person has his price."

What is not a modernization of the judiciary, but that the most ancient power factor of society has experienced a quiet renaissance in recent years: The tribes have become more important again. They clarify litigation, provide protection against attacks.

In the days following the storm, several sheikhs tell Said Jabbar that his son will have to die for shooting down unarmed members of their tribe. On the walls of the burnt-out house, from which he shot into the crowd, Grafiti, sprayed in bright red, stood: "Wanted for blood!" "Dead or alive".

An informal wheelwork that negotiates, threatens and appeases

The tribal leaders, the clergy and men such as the teacher Tamimi, the gas station owner Anwar, are filling the power vacuum of the 600,000-inhabitant city for the time being. The chief of police, all of whom call Abu Walid here, relies on negotiations and comes to unarmed meetings with demonstrators. His media officer, a snap-open eyewash and handkerchief, is a close friend of the city's top critical journalist.

For the first time in this once-conservative area, women step out of the background, encourage their daughters to speak out, organize food, use pier and walls as screens for meter-long images.

An informal gear has been created that negotiates, threatens and appeases so as not to turn the wave of protest into chaos. New elections are demanded, the removal of corrupt officials in Baghdad, nothing that could be achieved at the provincial level. It is a fragile balance, and after three weeks of rest, the arrest of a father of a family, the arrival of a special unit of the Home Office, is enough to cause another street battle with several deaths.

But on the whole, the rest keeps. Also, because no-one is left with the old power to fill the vacuum quickly.