Labour, protest and the Tishreen uprising: popular politics in Iraq after Saddam

Abstract

Based on interviews and fieldwork between 2022-2025, this thesis is about anti-sectarian popular struggles in Iraq from the US-led invasion of 2003 to the Tishreen Uprising of 2019. The thesis shows how nearly two decades of labour mobilization and popular protest set the stage for the largest popular uprising since the fall of Saddam which sought to overturn the corrupt ethno-sectarian regime established under foreign occupation. Using a Gramscian framework, it argues that popular struggles culminating with Tishreen did not achieve their aims due in part to their organizational fragmentation and ideological underdevelopment.