The Streets of Iraq: Protests and Democracy after Saddam

Abstract

Since the US led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded in 2003, the streets of Iraq have featured prominently in media and political discourse. Overwhelmingly, this coverage has emphasized the disorder and chaos found on these streets, and has done so through depictions of horrific violence in the forms of suicide bombings, kidnappings, mortar attacks, improvised explosive devices, sectarian hostility and the threat of all-out civil war. One might argue that the tendency of the Western media, academics and other commentators to emphasize the daily atrocities of post-Saddam Iraq has largely obfuscated the positive political developments and has seen successful stories of Iraq’s fledgling democracy buried beneath a seemingly endless reel of bloodshed and chaos. Where attention has been paid to the political landscape in Iraq, this attention has tended to privilege disagreements and disunities between Iraq’s myriad ethno-religious factions over the complexity of Iraqi politics and the highly inclusive and progressive nature of the democratic deliberations being conducted.