Hajar Youssif was on her daily commute to work, staring at her smartphone and flicking through her Instagram account when she looked up to find herself in an unusual location. The taxi driver had turned into an alley.
When she questioned the driver, he sped up.
“I started to feel uneasy and knew that something bad was going to happen,” said the 24-year-old office administrator, who had taken part in protests over lack of clean water, frequent power cuts and soaring unemployment in her hometown of Basra, Iraq’s oil capital and main port.
Photo: AP
She yelled and tried to open the door, but the driver had locked it. The taxi swerved into a courtyard where three masked men were waiting.
“They immediately told me: ‘We’ll teach you a lesson. Let it be a warning to other protesters,’” Youssif said in an interview several days after the incident.
The men slapped and beat her, and pulled off her headscarf, she said.
“At the end, they grabbed me by my hair and warned me not to take part in the protests before blindfolding me and dumping me on the streets,” she said.
Youssif believes the attack was part of what she and other activists describe as a campaign of intimidation and arbitrary detentions by powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias and political groups that control Basra, a city of more than 2 million people in southern Iraq’s Shiite Muslim heartland.
Angry Basra residents have repeatedly taken to the streets in the past few weeks to protest failing government services, including water contamination that sent thousands to hospitals.
Earlier this month, protests turned violent when demonstrators attacked and torched government offices, the headquarters of the Iranian-backed militias and Iran’s consulate in Basra — in a show of anger over what many residents perceive as Iran’s outsized control over local affairs.
The events in Basra reflect the growing influence of the militias, which played a major role in retaking Iraqi territory from Islamic State (IS) militants, who are Sunni Muslims.
Shortly after IS militants captured much of northern and western Iraq in 2014, tens of thousands of Shiite men answered a call-to-arms by the top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Buoyed by victory against the IS, some of the most feared Shiite militias took part in Iraq’s May national elections and their list — Fatah — won 48 seats in the 329-seat Iraqi parliament.
Fatah and other factions formed a wider Iran-backed coalition in the Iraqi parliament earlier this month and will likely be tasked with forming the new government.
In Basra, some people alleged that the militias were working with local authorities to quell the protests — a charge denied by Bassem al-Khafaji, head of Sayyed al-Shuhada, one of several Basra militias.
Some militia leaders in Basra accused protesters of colluding with the US, which has long worked to curb Iranian influence in Iraq.
A local leader of a prominent militia vowed to retaliate.
“We have pictures of those who burned down our headquarters and they will pay dearly,” he said on condition of anonymity in line with his group’s rules for speaking to the media.
The government has said protesters’ demands are legitimate, but has claimed that infiltrators were behind the violence.
Mahdi Salah Hassan, 26, said he was arrested by security forces from a protest tent early last month.
He said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and initially held in a room with 33 other protesters.
During three days of violent interrogation, Hassan said he was slapped on the face, hit with a cable on his feet and back, and hung by the arms from the ceiling.
Hassan said he was then transferred to two other lockups, each holding several dozen protesters.
When they released him after six days, they told him: “Don’t take part in protests or you won’t see the sun,” he said.
Still, he said he will continue to protest.
Two other activists, Ahmed al-Wihaili and Sara Talib, both 23, said they were threatened.
Al-Wihaili said an anonymous caller told him that “you only cost us the price of a bullet.”
Youssif said the beating left her shaken and that threats continue, but she will not be deterred.
“I’m taking to the streets for the sake of my town Basra, to get public services and to get rid of those militias and political parties,” she said.
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