As sequel to protests in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Iraqi citizens have also in 2015 up until 2018 often and massively protested against the corruption and incompetence in their government which according to analysts and protesters had led to long-running problems in electricity supplies, clean water availability, Iranian interference in Iraqi politics, high unemployment, and a stagnant economy.
The muhasasa quota agreements of 2003–2006 (distributing ministerial positions including budgets over 'ethnic and religious groups', thus undermining and obliterating any sense of Iraqi national unity) were considered the root of most of those Iraqi problems.
Background
Twelve years incompetent and corrupt politics
The elite cartel and muhasasa system, ruling Iraq since 2003, holding that governmental posts and power should be proportionally distributed over the political parties or over the "ethnic, religious and sectarian groups" of Iraq, had, according to many analysts and protesters, led to twelve years of incompetent government up to 2015, failing public services, neglected infrastructure, massive youth unemployment (30% in 2014), political patronage and self-enrichment of politicians hence corruption hence a depleted public purse, Iranian political infiltration, sectarian violence, economic underdevelopment, and had therefore already for years drawn widespread popular criticism.
In 2011, demonstrations against the corruption of the government under then-ruling prime minister Nouri al-Maliki (2006–2014) had been suppressed by detainment and intimidation of the organizers. His successor, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, had taken office in 2014 with promises of tough action against corrupt practices, and indeed the graft had become less open but the mechanisms of corruption were still in place.
Long-running problems
The most obvious failure – blamed by analysts and protesters on the muhasasa system (see above) – was the government's inability to reliably provide electricity, which was commonly provided only twelve hours a day but often in the cities only a few hours per day.
Another long-running problem triggering the Iraqi protests in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, especially in Basra, a city in the centre of the southern Iraqi oil industry but with a relatively low socio-economic development and living standard, was the shortage of fresh drinking water, due to five factors: Upstream dams in the rivers Tigris and Euphrates or their contributory rivers in Turkey, Syria and Iran had diminished those rivers on Iraqi territory; for the city of Basra and surroundings, new dams around 2009 in the Iranian river Karun had been especially disastrous; Citizens accused Iran of throwing saline drainage in the Shatt al-Arab river, the Iraqi river into which the Iranian river Karun empties; similarly, Iraqi officials have stated that Iran at times pumped contaminated water, left over from its farmlands, towards Iraqi territory; Streams and canals in southern Iraq had become clogged with trash being dumped; Iraq's infrastructure generally was crumbling; specifically, the neglect of Iraq's water management had allowed saltwater from the Persian Gulf to leak into southern Iraqi farmland and freshwater canals; The rainfall in Iraq was decreasing as an effect of the global climate change.
2015: Protests and reform resolutions
All that since years smouldering discontent (see above) escalated in the summer of 2015 into public street protests when a lasting decline in oil prices (oil generating 96% of the state's income) and a strong increase of military expenditures (due to the war on ISIL) strongly affected the state's ability to satisfy the needs and demands of the people.
In July 2015, protests sparked in Basra, triggered mainly by the poor electricity supplies (see above). During the protest on 16 July, a man was killed in a clash with police. On another protest on 19 or 20 July in Basra, again "violence erupted". Those protests spread to more cities.