On the ground floor of the concrete high-rise that became the headquarters of the protest movement in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, slogans scrawled in black and a mural of a fish dressed in a suit disappear under coats of white paint.
The young Iraqis erasing the murals are followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite Muslim cleric whose support fueled the largely secular protests against government corruption that broke out last October.
Last month from Iran, where he is pursuing his religious studies, Sadr announced the protests have taken the wrong path and that he was withdrawing his support. Two weeks later, he said the protests needed to be “cleansed.”