Hundreds
Of Thousands March In Iraq To Demand End Of US Occupation
By Bill Van Auken
11 April, 2007
World
Socialist Web
In
a huge demonstration marking the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad
to US invasion forces, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis marched in the
city of Najaf Monday to demand an end to the American occupation of
their land.
Large crowds of men, women
and children waving Iraqi flags—signaling an appeal to national
unity against the occupation—marched behind banners reading “Down
with Bush, Down with America.” Others burned American flags or
stomped them with their shoes.
The overwhelmingly Shia demonstration,
called by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was the largest seen in Najaf
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Marchers chanted, “No, no, no
to America ... Muqtada yes, yes, yes,” “Yes to Iraq, yes
to sovereignty, no to occupation” and “The terrorist Bush
should leave.” The massive march began outside a mosque in Najaf’s
twin city of Kufa and proceeded to the center of Najaf, considered a
holy city by the Shia community.
On the eve of the demonstration,
al-Sadr issued a call for Iraqi soldiers and police not to fight on
the side of the Americans against their co-religionists in the Mahdi
Army, the Shia militia that is loyal to him. In an apparent indication
of the potency of such an appeal, soldiers and police in uniform joined
the demonstration in significant numbers.
The appeal came in the midst
of the fierce fighting that erupted Friday as US and Iraqi forces laid
siege to Diwaniya, a city of over 400,000, 110 miles south of Baghdad.
A stark indication of the
deep distrust felt by the US military toward Iraqi security forces came
in the form of a leaflet airdropped on the city warning local police
to stay inside and warning that any of them seen carrying a weapon would
be shot on sight.
The fighting, dubbed Operation
Black Eagle by American commanders, included air strikes by US warplanes.
A missile attack Saturday demolished a house, killing at least six people
inside, including two children and a woman. Attack helicopters also
hovered over the crowded urban area. Forces apparently organized by
the Mahdi Army were reported to have destroyed and burned at least one
US tank and two armored Humvees in the early stages of the fighting.
There were reports of scores
of dead and wounded. The Iraqi press quoted Dr. Hamid Ja’ati,
the general director of health services in Diwaniya, charging US forces
with barring ambulances from transporting the wounded to the local hospital.
He also issued an appeal for emergency medical aid to be rushed to the
city.
The White House and US military
spokesmen made the ludicrous attempt to cast the mass anti-US protest
in Najaf as a measure of success for the invasion and occupation.
American military spokesman
Col. Steven Boylan declared that Iraqis “could not have done this
four years ago,” referring to the mass anti-US protest. “This
is the right to assemble, the right to free speech ... This is progress,
there’s no two ways about it.” That the demonstrators were
supporting a movement that is engaged in armed conflict with the US
occupation seemed to have escaped the colonel.
Similarly, a White House
spokesman Gordon Johndroe commented, “Iraq, four years on, is
now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions
... this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam
Hussein.”
Perhaps the most absurd of
all the attempts to place a positive “spin” on the events
in Iraq was that of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who was
defeated in last year’s Democratic primary because of his slavish
support for the Iraq war, but then successfully defended his seat as
an independent. He seemed to suggest that Sadr’s nationalist appeal
was indicative of the success of the Bush administration’s “surge,”
presumably because the American military escalation had succeeded in
uniting all factions against the occupation.
“He is not calling
for resurgence of sectarian conflict,” said Lieberman in an appearance
on CNN. “He’s striking a nationalist chord ... He’s
acknowledging that the surge is working.”
Those participating in the
protest, however, had a very different conception of the “progress”
in the four years since the fall of Baghdad.
“The fall of Saddam
means nothing to us as long as the alternative is the American occupation,”
Haider Abdul Rahim Mustafa, 23, an Interior Ministry employee, told
the New York Times.
“What freedom? What liberation?”
“In four years of occupation,
our sons have been killed and women made widows,” 39-year-old
Ahmed al-Mayahie, a Shia from the southern city of Basra, told a news
agency. “The occupier raised slogans saying Iraq is free, Iraq
is liberated. What freedom? What liberation? There is nothing but destruction.
We do not want their liberation and their presence. We tell them to
get out of our land.”
A statement was read to the
demonstration from al-Sadr, who has gone into hiding—US officials
claim he is in Iran, while his supporters insist he has remained in
Iraq—in response to the US-led security crackdown in Baghdad.
He described the US occupation
as “48 months of anxiety, oppression and occupational tyranny”
that had brought the Iraqi people only “more death, destruction
and humiliation.” He continued, “Every day tens are martyred,
tens are crippled and every day we see and hear US interference in every
aspect of our lives, which means that we are not sovereign, not independent
and therefore not free. This is what Iraq has harvested from the US
invasion.”
Al-Sadr’s call for
the massive demonstration was widely seen as an attempt to placate the
growing anger of his supporters and the Iraqi people as a whole against
the four-year-old occupation and the 30,000-troop escalation ordered
by Bush earlier this year. Within the Shia population, in particular,
there is growing disquiet over al-Sadr’s apparent decision not
to resist the US military’s entry into the sprawling slums of
Sadr City and the attacks and arrests carried out against elements of
the Shia militia.
In 2004, al-Sadr’s
Mahdi Army militia forced the US occupation forces to beat a tactical
retreat when it resisted their attempts to gain control of Najaf, Karbala
and Sadr City. The Shia uprising coincided with fierce resistance to
US attempts to dominate the predominantly Sunni city of Fallujah, which
was only conquered in a murderous siege launched later that year, after
a truce was concluded with the Shia forces.
Now, al-Sadr is once again
promoting Shia-Sunni unity against the US occupation, which was the
conception underlying the massive display of Iraqi flags, not only on
the demonstration in Najaf, but throughout Sadr City on the anniversary
of Baghdad’s fall. Within the Sunni population, however, elements
of the Mahdi Army, including units that have entered the Iraqi security
forces, are blamed for much of the sectarian death squad killings that
have claimed thousands of lives.
To the extent that the US
presses its offensive against the Mahdi Army and forces al-Sadr to retaliate
in order to hold on to his popular base, the future of the Iraqi government
of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki becomes ever more precarious. With
32 members in parliament and six government ministers, al-Sadr’s
movement is a principal component of this government and without its
support it is doubtful that the government could survive.
The chief spokesman for US
forces in Iraq, Rear Admiral Mark Fox, gave a more frank assessment
of the crisis confronting the occupation, tempering claims of “accomplishments”
with the admission that “the past four years have also been disappointing,
frustrating and increasingly dangerous in many parts of Iraq.”
As the naval officer spoke,
the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq had climbed to 3,282,
with 10 soldiers losing their lives just last weekend and another reported
killed in the fighting in Diwaniya on Monday. The number of wounded
has risen to over 26,000.
Just since the beginning
of this month, 36 US soldiers have been killed, raising the prospect
of April becoming one of the deadliest months since the invasion was
launched more than four years ago. Already, January, February and March
constituted the deadliest first quarter since the invasion, with 244
US military deaths, compared with 148 in 2006.
There is growing evidence
that the Bush administration’s “surge” is responsible
for the mounting casualties. Not only are more troops being deployed
in combat situations, but the growing strain caused by the increased
deployments means that more soldiers are being sent into dangerous conditions
without adequate recuperation, training or equipment.
On Monday, the Pentagon revealed
the identity of four more Army National Guard brigades, a total of 13,000
troops, which are to be sent to Iraq. The units are from Arkansas, Indiana,
Ohio and Oklahoma. Sources also indicated that some 18,000 US soldiers
already in Iraq may have their tours of duty extended.
For Iraqi civilians, the
carnage continues unabated. The US “surge” has only served
to shift the endemic violence from Baghdad—which was totally paralyzed
Monday by a 24-hour ban on all vehicular traffic—to outlying areas.
Deaths continue to be reported on the level of approximately 100 a day
throughout the country.
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