Shafaq News- Baghdad

Baghdad and several other Iraqi provinces are seeing wave after wave of protests, by some counts three to four a week, demanding appointment to public jobs, permanent tenure for contract staff, and better professional rights. Yet the protests keep coming without clear results, and a sharper problem comes into focus: is demonstrating still an effective way to pressure the government, or has it lost some of the weight it once carried?

The past few months trace the pattern. On May 18, 2026, around 5,000 older graduates filled central Baghdad to demand appointments. Protests by holders of higher degrees followed in late June, then in August, by rotating resident doctors and medical-profession graduates, alongside further demonstrations by older graduates and contract employees pressing for permanent placement on the state payroll. Some of these gatherings ended in friction with riot forces and injuries among protesters from various groups —echoing the memory of the 2019 Tishreen protests, the mass anti-government movement over unemployment and corruption that was met with a lethal crackdown.

Haider Ali Kazim, a representative of the older graduates, told Shafaq News that "the current government responded to our demands after three protests and met with representatives of the protesters, but it set no deadline for resolving the issue."

The protesters, he added, "will wait for a limited period, but not a long one. If no clear solutions emerge, they will return to demonstrating, and perhaps to sit-ins and other forms of protest."

Kazim noted that the latest demonstration was the fifth since the older-graduates movement began, and the third under the government of Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi. Protesters knew, he said, that the appointment issue under previous governments had been tainted by corruption and the sale of job grades, but they hope the current government will be different, especially given its talk of fighting corruption. He put the number of older graduates at around 150,000, some now near retirement age and still searching for job security.

Read more: Iraq: 250K graduates annually amid 20% youth unemployment

Pressure, Or A Temporary Fix?

Political scientist Qasim al-Rubaie said repeated protests reflect “structural failure in the political system and in the performance of state institutions,” particularly in the equitable distribution of wealth and public-sector opportunities.

Protest, al-Rubaie told Shafaq News, "has become the most effective tool for demanding rights, especially since the political system passed through the Tishreen uprising and its aftermath in a state of threat and instability. That pushed state agencies to respond to protesters' demands, whether general or sectional, until demonstrations gradually turned into a means of obtaining rights amid the absence of planning and fairness in distributing opportunity."

Why A Government Job Is Worth Protesting For

In Iraq, a public-sector appointment is not one option among many; it is the main road to a stable income. According to government data, the state supports around 4.2 million public employees, more than 3 million retirees, and roughly 3 million people in the social protection network, leaving over 10 million Iraqis dependent on monthly government transfers. That dependence helps explain why successive groups of graduates continue returning to the streets when promised jobs fail to materialize.

But the state they are pushing has little room to move. Oil supplied about 84% of Iraq's revenues in the first quarter of 2026, while public salaries and wages formed the single largest expense at 15.32 trillion dinars (nearly $11.8 billion) in that quarter alone. Across the year, Iraq spends roughly $70 billion on salaries and pensions. With payroll already swallowing the budget, financing tens of thousands of new appointments runs straight into the treasury's limits, the structural bind al-Rubaie describes.

In the older-graduates file alone, only about 8,600 positions are available through the Federal Public Service Council, even though roughly 43,000 graduates have already received official employment codes, with appointments tied to the approval of the 2026 federal budget. By late May, a Baghdad demonstration marked the 27th consecutive protest organized by graduates and advanced-degree holders since 2023.

That leverage, al-Rubaie said, has since faded: "The security situation stabilized, the pressure protests can exert declined, and the state's own capacity to meet demands, much of which centers on appointments or requires financial allocations, fell as well. Together, that made the response to protests limited, if not absent."

If planning built on fair distribution keeps failing, he expects citizens to reach for more forceful tools: strikes and organized, legal work stoppages by employees and unions; organized economic boycotts of certain goods or services where appropriate and lawful; and recourse to the courts to challenge decisions that break the law. He also points to parliamentary and media pressure, turning demands into concrete oversight and legislative files, and to unions and professional and student associations as channels more durable than spontaneous gatherings.

Used together, al-Rubaie said, these tools could help build a state of institutions grounded in citizenship and national identity, through justice and equality before the law, and away from discrimination by party, ethnicity, or anything else. That last point is a reference to the post-2003 power-sharing system, known as muhasasa, under which state jobs and posts have long been parceled out among political blocs.

Mustafa Saadoun, director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, said governments often treat protests either as political challenges or as demands confined to particular groups, even when they reflect broader public grievances.

Failing to respond "creates dysfunction and widens the trust gap between the citizen and state institutions," Saadoun told Shafaq News, adding that demands usually go unmet because governments cannot deliver them, are stalling, or believe the demands do not serve the state's interest. When the same demands, needs, and people keep returning to the street, he said, it reveals that the mechanisms for handling protest are sometimes momentary, designed to contain and quiet a protest rather than address the real demands or the causes that drove people out in the first place.

Read more: Iraq’s protests after Tishreen: A system that learned how to contain the street

From Hope To Frustration

Social researcher Ahmed al-Dhahabi said protests that drag on leave a mark on those who join them, particularly as the wait grows long.

Sustained protest, al-Dhahabi told Shafaq News, does not mean only one thing: it can express the strength of a demand and an awareness of rights, but it can equally reveal accumulated frustration and the weakness of institutional channels in absorbing those demands. Many of the recent protests drew young people demanding appointment, alongside others tied to delayed salaries and similar issues.

Protest, he explained, usually begins with a psychological charge such as hope, directed anger, a sense of the power to change things, and the feeling that the protester is no longer alone. The presence of others generates what social psychology calls "collective efficacy": the belief that a group, acting together, can bring about change, which can deepen an individual's sense of empowerment, belonging, and social support.

The trouble begins, al-Dhahabi said, when the protest becomes open-ended with no clear response. The protester can move, psychologically, from hope to waiting and then to frustration and anger, which may erode trust or lead to withdrawal. “The most dangerous thing about waiting is not its length but waiting without a horizon. When people repeat an action and feel it produces no response, feelings of helplessness, disappointment, and lost faith in institutions can set in.”

By contrast, al-Dhahabi said, successful protests can lift levels of empowerment, identity, and cohesion among participants, while repeated failure tends to bring stress, burnout, and a sense of lost power. A long protest can also strengthen protesters' social identity: a person moves from saying "I have a problem" to "I have a cause," and individual suffering hardens into collective awareness.

A Crisis That Sharpens The Deadlock

This wave is building against a fresh fiscal shock. Iraq missed July salary payments for many public employees after oil revenue collapsed, with exports falling from about 100 million barrels in February to 32.1 million in May and June amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Officials are now weighing payment every 45 days, with one told Shafaq News that "We will pay whenever we have cash." A government struggling to pay the workers it already has is in no position to appoint the tens of thousands demanding to join them.

Between the repetition of protest and the retreat of the government's response, the equation looks more complicated than a simple question about the street's capacity to demonstrate. Demands that persist without solutions may turn protest from a pressure tool aimed at a specific result into a continuous condition, one that reflects a wider crisis of trust between the citizen and the institutions of the state.

Read more: Classroom to street corner: Degree holders stranded in Iraq's job drought

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.