Baghdad
Tens of thousands of followers of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr thronged Baghdad to mark the sixth anniversary of the city’s fall to US troops, and to demand they leave immediately.
"Down, down USA," the demonstrators chanted as a Ali al-Marwani, a Sadrist official, denounced the US occupation of Iraq that began with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square.
The crowds of Sadr supporters stretched from the giant Sadr City slum in Baghdad to the square five kilometres away, where protesters burned an effigy featuring the face of former US President George W Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq, and also the face of Saddam.
Shi’ites were brutally persecuted under Saddam’s rule.
"God, unite us, return our riches, free the prisoners from the prisons, return sovereignty to our country ... make our country free from the occupier, and prevent the occupier from stealing our oil," Sadr said in a message read by a Sadr movement aide Asaad al-Nassiri.
Residual force
"God, make us liberators of our land," the message said, exhorting the demonstrators to shake hands with each other and the policemen.
President Barack Obama, who flew into Baghdad on an unannounced visit on Tuesday, has ordered all US combat troops to leave Iraq by the end of August next year, leaving a residual force of 35,000-50,000 trainers, advisers and logistics personnel. Under a bilateral security agreement signed with Bush, all US troops must withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Sadr, scion of one of Iraq’s great Shi’ite religious dynasties, is believed to be in Iran studying religious jurisprudence.
His Mehdi Army fought pitched battles against US forces during the bloody aftermath of the US-led invasion but have retreated after Sadr called on them to abandon armed combat and turn themselves into a social welfare organisation.
—Reuters
