Fierce clashes broke out last week in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, which attracted Iraqi authorities and resulted in at least eight fatalities, according to a report.
The Financial Times reported last Thursday there is growing public anger over government corruption on top of owed salaries. The Washington Post reported the government worked quickly to shut down the internet and arrest reporters who covered the clashes.
The report said the funds the demonstrators were fighting over – many of whom were in their teens – are controlled by officials in Baghdad. A 13-year-old was one of the eight fatalities after security forces opened fire in the town of Said Sadiq.
“Salaries mean money, of course, but they also mean power,” Hossein Othman, a former public servant, told the Post. “When they don’t pay us when they withhold our rights, it depletes our sense of self. It just hits you so hard. It’s about dignity.”
The Post reported that poverty levels in the region have doubled since 2018, and more than one-third of families there live on less than $400 a month. The coronavirus “only deepened that deprivation,” the report said.
TREND FORECAST: Ahmed Amin, an activist, told the Post, “As a people, we have nothing to live for. They have destroyed our future, they have taken our hope. That’s why we’re here.”
Indeed, as Gerald Celente has long said, “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”
What has gone unreported by the media covering this event is that Iraq was criminally destroyed by the U.S. and the U.K. in the 2003 war they launched based on the overt lie that Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda.
The war, which cost trillions and killed millions, has destroyed much of the nation and devastated its people.
While Brent Crude oil prices have boosted a bit over $50 per barrel, the price is well below the $70 dollar range it was trading at the beginning of the year, and it is too low a price to boost the nation’s GDP.
Beyond Iraq, oil-rich nations, be they rich or poor ones, will suffer social unrest as oil prices remain weak; revenue and incomes decline; and people take to the streets to protest the lack of basic living standards, unemployment, government corruption, crime, and violence.
In turn, it will also escalate the refugee trend as more people do what they can to escape to safe-haven nations.
