Iraq’s political deadlock turns violent

leaders have long recognised the power of vanishing. Their greatest Imam, Muhammad the Mahdi (“messiah”), disappeared in 873. Yet more than a millennium on, he is a potent symbol that inspires believers to challenge oppressors. Muqtada al-Sadr, a rabble-rousing Iraqi cleric and politician, appears to be following suit. On August 29th he announced his “final withdrawal” from politics after months of deadlock since the general election last year. Far from signalling that he was quitting, though, his announcement was a clarion call for his followers to take to the streets. Protesters swiftly overran parliament, then fanned out across the “international zone”, Iraq’s fortified seat of government in central Baghdad that is still commonly known as the Green Zone. They stormed government offices and splashed in the Green Zone’s palatial pools. They tore down the icons of their Iranian-backed political opponents, the Co-ordination Framework (), including the portraits of its patron, Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general who was killed in an American airstrike in 2020.