Iraq declares emergency after Green Zone breach

Bloomberg

Iraq declared a state of emergency in Baghdad after supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr breached Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and stormed parliament to protest against corruption and the country’s political paralysis.
Mobile-phone video footage broadcast on Iraqi televisions showed hundreds of Al Sadr’s supporters inside the legislature on Saturday. Al-Sadr earlier accused lawmakers of sectarianism in their selection of ministers and ordered his bloc to withdraw from the parliament session where members were preparing to finish voting on a new cabinet.
Storming parliament and the Green Zone, which houses ministries and foreign embassies, marks an escalation in a crisis that has undermined Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi ’s reform push and stymied efforts to defeat IS militants. Abadi’s plan to set up a cabinet of technocrats has so far failed as parties fight to preserve a system of patronage.
“The situation in Iraq has become very dangerous,” said Wathiq Al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based political analyst. “No one will be able to control thousands of angry protesters while the rest of residents in Baghdad are in panic and living in real fear.”
Almost two years after IS captured Mosul, the country’s biggest northern city, government forces are struggling in the fight against the militant group. The war, as well as the plunge in oil prices have battered the finances of OPEC’s second-largest producer. The government is in talks to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund, which expects the nation’s non-oil economy to contract for a third year in 2016.
The US Embassy said it’s monitoring the situation, adding that reports that embassy personnel are being evacuated are inaccurate.
“Under the Vienna Convention, all diplomatic missions are protected by the host country’s security forces,” it said in a statement. “We have full confidence that the Iraqi Security Forces will meet its obligations.”