Based on independent social media and the testimony of Iraqis living inside and outside Iraq, the Portuguese Iraq Tribunal reports the following information:
1. The military success of the insurrection and the collapse of the armed forces of the government of Nuri al-Maliki prove that the Iraqi population is fed up with the regime. The general sentiment is that “nothing could be worse than what we have.” Lacking support, the regime has reached a breaking point.
2. The struggle has the participation of different organizations and political forces. Both in the combats and in the governments of the liberated cities, the action has been coordinated by a Revolutionary Military Council made up of former Iraqi officers, young revolutionaries and tribal members.
3. The participation in the movement of the Ba’ath Party, the Revolutionary Brigades of 1920, the military leaders of the former Iraqi armed forces, the Islamic organizations of resistance belie the exclusive role that the western political media has given to organizations like the ISIL-ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). This distortion of the facts, quickly repeated by the social media, is aimed at making it easier to neutralize public opinion with the charge that what is going on is a “terrorist” movement and thus justify a military intervention with troops or for indiscriminate bombings carried out by the regime installed in Baghdad.
4. The targets of the insurrection are clear: the government and all of the power structure led by Maliki, who is the heir of the political system imposed by the U.S. occupation – and, along with this, the domination exercised by U.S. imperialism and the influences of all external forces that have been involved in the Iraqi conflict.
5. The insurrection underway has a nationalist and patriotic character. The last communiqué of the Revolutionary Military Council (June 14) specified the following objectives of the popular uprising:
— To restore justice and not to seek revenge. All settling of accounts must be done according to the law and through a fair trial.
— To respect neighboring states and their sovereignty. – To end the sectarianism and political repression that the occupation implanted. — To begin a constitutional process that will represent all Iraqis. ”
6. Eyewitness reports from the liberated cities reveal that the population is participating in the organization of daily life. There is no news of massacres or acts of revenge. The presence of non-Iraqi forces is insignificant. Barriers to the movement of people have been removed. The population that fled at the beginning of the insurrection, especially from Mosul, is now returning home. Its major worry is that the Maliki government or the U.S. military will respond with bombing raids, as was done in Fallujah and Ramadi.
7. Different organizations, both religious and secular, have declared support for the revolt and called up the population and on the combatants to maintain unity, reject sectarian actions and treat the population of the liberated cities with extreme care in order that “these cities become a model that others wish to emulate” (open letter from the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq).
The events of the last few days were only surprising by the lightning-like nature of the military actions of the insurgents. But they are not stunning if one takes into account the extent of the suffering of the Iraqi population in the last 10 years and the resistance that has opposed the occupation and the barbarous regime that followed it. What is happening now is the culmination of the armed resistance of 2003-2006, the mass demonstrations of 2011, the generalized protests of 2012-2013 repressed by the regime with live gunfire. And it answers the miserable living conditions, the arbitrary massacres and the theft of the national resources. In these 10 years conditions matured for an enormous change within Iraq.
