With border guards, clean-up crews and hospitals, Iraqi protesters have created a mini-state in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, offering the kinds of services they say their government has failed to provide.

"We've done more in two months than the state has done in 16 years," said Haydar Chaker, a construction worker from Babylon province, south of the capital.

Everyone has their role, from cooking bread to painting murals, with a division of labour and scheduled shifts.

Chaker came to Baghdad with his friends after the annual Arbaeen pilgrimage to the Shiite holy city Karbala, his pilgrim's tent and cooking equipment equally useful at a protest encampment.

Installed in the iconic square whose name means "liberation", he provides three meals a day to hundreds of protesters, cooking with donated foods.

In the morning he coordinates with the surrounding tents, dividing sacks of rice, sugar, flour and other ingredients then assigning meals, drinks and sandwiches for volunteers to prepare.

The self-reliant encampment is the heart of a protest movement that seeks the radical overhaul of Iraq's political system, and despite frequent power cuts, it never stops beating.

- War, a habit -

At the entrances to the square, dozens of guards like Abou al-Hassan man makeshift barricades, where men and women search incoming visitors.

"We Iraqis rub shoulders with the military from a young age, so we pick up a thing or two," said Hassan, dressed in camouflage fatigues.

"We don't need special training to detect saboteurs and keep them out... or to be able to defend our state," he added, alertly scanning the perimeter.

But on Friday, their "state" came under attack, when gunmen Iraqi authorities have failed to identify stormed a parking building occupied by protesters.

After the massacre that left 24 dead, protesters installed new checkpoints and closed an 18-storey building overlooking the square.

Infiltrated by intelligence agents and at the mercy of gunmen able to cross police and military roadblocks at will, protesters insist their mini-state remains committed to non-violence.

But in a country where the influence and arsenals of pro-Iran armed groups continue to increase, the protest enclave has forged an alliance with another of Iraq's states within a state.

Unarmed "blue helmets" from Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades) have intervened to protect protesters.

- 'My weapon? A brush' -

When protests started in October, Ahmed al-Harithi "abandoned his job" as an obstetrician gynaecologist to protest and later to care for the injured.

He learned to coordinate with the paramedics and tuk-tuk drivers who ferried the wounded.

Soon, the doctors' and pharmacists' syndicates were organising a "mini-health ministry" in Tahrir, he said.

They coordinated with logistics cells to stock medication that was donated or bought at a discount from sympathetic pharmacies.

To light their clinics at night, protesters jerry-rigged connections to the municipal high-tension wires. During daily power cuts, they rely on purchased generators.

In front of the field clinics, as tuk-tuks zoom between clusters of protesters, dozens of volunteers sweep the pavement. Tahrir has never been so clean, protesters say, in contrast to its previous neglect by municipal workers.

Houda Amer has not been to class in weeks. Instead, the teacher spends her days painting the curbs and railings in the square.

"My weapon is my paintbrush," she said with a smile.

"Our revolution doesn't want to destroy everything," she said. "We are all here to build our nation."

Iraq mob lynches youth accused of attacking protesters
Baghdad (AFP) Dec 12, 2019 - Demonstrators in Iraq lynched a teenager accused of attacking a protest encampment in Baghdad on Thursday, police and witnesses said, in an attack that threatened to tarnish the protest movement's broadly non-violent image.

Police said a dispute between a 17-year-old male and protesters culminated with the body of the youth being strung from a traffic light near Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the months-old anti-government protest movement.

Earlier, police said protesters, some of whom have accused police of not protecting them from "saboteurs", set fire to the nearby house of the young man.

Video streamed live online showed security forces withdrawing before a crowd dragged a man along the ground while people kicked him.

His body, dressed only in underpants, was then strung up by the feet from a traffic light.

The corpse was later removed and taken to a forensic morgue, witnesses said. The morgue confirmed receiving a body.

The brutal episode could radically change the situation for a protest movement that has claimed pacifism in the face of violence in which 460 people have been killed and 25,000 injured, mostly protesters.

A statement signed by "the protesters of Tahrir" shared online denounced "a Machiavellian plan aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the peaceful protesters".

The thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square "had nothing to do with this morning's events", it concluded.

As images emerged online, a Twitter account close to Moqtada Sadr addressed the Shiite cleric's unarmed "blue helmets", who deployed to protect protesters after unidentified gunmen attacked them last week.

"If within 48 hours, the terrorists responsible are not identified, the blue helmets will have to withdraw from all the places where protesters assemble," it wrote.

Powerful pro-Iran militia leader Qais al-Khazali -- who was recently targeted by US sanctions -- denounced the "chaos" he has warned of since protests began.

"How long will this chaos and lawlessness continue, these weak security forces and proliferation of weapons and dirty militias," he asked on Twitter.

Protesters accuse pro-Iran armed factions of playing a role in the killing and abduction of protesters.

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Prominent activist gunned down in Iraq shrine city Karbala
Karbala, Iraq (AFP) Dec 8, 2019
A prominent civil society activist was shot dead late Sunday in Iraq's shrine city of Karbala while returning home from anti-government protests, a neighbour told AFP. Fahem al-Tai, 53, had been taking part in weeks of rallies denouncing Iraq's entrenched political elite as corrupt, inept and beholden to neighbouring Iran. On Sunday night, he was dropped off by two friends on a motorcycle near his home, according to a neighbour. "The area is close to the shrines, the police station, the prov ... read more