The World Paid Attention to the Wrong Iraqi Protests
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square has been the center of ongoing protests since October, but on New Year’s Eve it looked like any other public celebration venue—with music, dancing, food and drinks, and fireworks at midnight as the assembled crowd cheered. But that was not the event that received attention around the world.
Several hours earlier, across the Tigris River, which separates Tahrir Square from Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, a different gathering took place. Hundreds of militiamen and their supporters stormed the gates of the U.S. embassy, penetrated its reception area, and set it ablaze. Waving banners of some of the state-sanctioned, Iranian-backed Iraqi militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), this angry crowd chanted “Death to America” and graffitied the walls with the slogan “Soleimani is our leader”—a
