Iraq's Shia political Islamist establishment faces protests and pressure over US troop pullout

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Protests against Iraq's Shia Islamist ruling establishment and its affiliated militias have continued across Iraqi cities, reaching 297 demonstrations within 100 days of the government taking office, according to a published analysis. The unrest comes as Iraq's government and paramilitary groups navigate a politically sensitive period marked by the planned withdrawal of US forces by the end of September, intensifying regional competition and declining Iranian influence in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. The analysis links the visits to Iraq by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani and later by the speaker of the Iranian parliament to those regional shifts. It argues that the militias are positioned so that they cannot openly call for US forces to remain, nor can they sincerely celebrate their departure, and frames the US drawdown as part of a longer strategic process that began under the Obama administration and was reshaped by a China-oriented strategy. According to the piece, the current government has postponed the September 30 timeline it set for disarming the militias. The militias, it adds, have tied any weapons handover to the resolution of the PKK issue, the withdrawal of Turkish forces from the north and the independence of decision-making. The ruling establishment, which pays roughly 4 million public-sector workers, is described as economically vulnerable amid the crisis. The analysis warns that the expanding protest movement increases risks both to the militias' armed role and to the future of the political system.