Al Sadr calls for resistance to US occupation

There doesn't seem to be much new in his message. His rallies on the anniversary of the war obviously are attracting large crowds. The rallies seem more or less peaceful. Sadr himself is not risking arrest by appearing. He may or may not be in Iran. This report is from Der Spiegel.


Al-Sadr Calls for Resistance Against the US
Thousands of Iraqis have turned out to protest US troops on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has issued his fiercest anti-American statement in months.

Anti-American protests called by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr filled a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad on Monday, as the government imposed a curfew in the capital to keep order on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The April 9 demonstrations marked the day in 2003 when US Marines and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division took Baghdad. Thousands of demonstrators marched from Kufa to the holy city of Najaf, waving Iraqi flags and chanting, "No, no to America, yes, yes to Moqtada," with police lining the demonstration route. They weren't allowed to protest in Baghdad.


Photo Gallery: Iraqis Protest US Troops
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)

Al-Sadr -- who is in hiding -- had exhorted his followers over the weekend to attend the protests and end the recent fighting in the Shiite city of Diwaniya, where US forces began a mission on Friday to oust his Mahdi Army militia. Al-Sadr blamed the US for the continuing violence and said, in a statement distributed in Najaf on Sunday, "You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy ... God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them -- not against the sons of Iraq."

It wasn't an outright call to arms, but it was al-Sadr's most aggressive anti-American rhetoric since a security crackdown in Baghdad drove him underground almost two months ago.

The crackdown intensified on Monday. Vehicle traffic was banned in Baghdad starting at 5 a.m., but cars full of protesters flowed out of the capital city before the curfew to demonstrate elsewhere. The government on Sunday had cancelled the April 9 holiday, but quickly recinded the decree.


NEWSLETTER
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday.

"There will be protests marking the fourth anniversary," said Iraqi Army Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the latest US-Iraqi security mission in Baghdad, to explain the vehicle curfew. "We don't want to give the terrorists a chance to use this opportunity."

Al-Sadr has officially been ordering members of his Mahdi Army militia to disarm ever since the crackdown started in Baghdad in mid-February. But his anti-American rhetoric hasn't slackened, and some of the violence has moved to Shiite towns in the Diyala province south of Baghdad, like Diwaniya. On Sunday a car bomb in another such town, Mahmudiya, killed 17 people and wounded two dozen while in Baghdad, the bodies of 17 people, some apparently tortured, were found across the city in the last 24 hours. The US military on Monday announced the deaths of 10 soldiers in Iraq over the weekend including six on Sunday.

The Iraqi government called last week for a broadening of the crackdown to other cities.

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI released an Easter message on Sunday lamenting violence in Africa and the Middle East and decrying the "continual slaughter" in Iraq.

Talabani lashes out at US occupation

Surprising that Talabani speaks of an occupation. The US of course now considers itself as being present in Iraq at Iraq's invitation and UN approval. It uses these figleafs regularly. Of course one might wonder if Iraq is a sovereign nation why it cannot protect Iranians seized from Irbil or even have them released! It cannot even control US forces or control US jails in Iraq. Why does not this sovereign nation release to the press the new oil law and have a national debate about it before it passes parliament?


Talabani lashes out at US policy in Iraq under 'occupation'
March 30, 2007




Iraqi President Jalal Talabani attends the Arab summit in Riyadh on 28 March. Talabani has said that the US-led invasion of his country four years ago had turned into an occupation with dire consequences for Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday that the US-led invasion of his country four years ago had turned into an occupation with dire consequences for Iraq.

Talabani, a member of the Kurdish minority, which has been largely insulated from the violence and devastation visited on other parts of the country since Saddam Hussein fell, was addressing the Arab summit in the Saudi capital.

"The decision to turn the liberation of Iraq into an occupation ... with the dire consequences this had internally and the fears (it aroused) in Arab, regional and international arenas, all this was contrary to what Iraqi parties and national forces were planning at the time," he said.


"This applies equally to many hasty decisions and measures taken by the occupation's civil administration without understanding the Iraqis' point of view and the consequences they had on the situation in the country and the political process as a whole," he said.

"The policies pursued in the wake of the overthrow of the former regime, and the weakness of the international response to the will of the political forces who rallied to rebuild the new Iraq, stymied our early quest to broaden popular participation in order to ... establish security and stability and confront the challenges of sabotage, chaos and terrorism as quickly as possible and with the least human and material losses."

Talabani did not spell out the mistakes he was referring to, but the US-run civil administration installed after Saddam's fall has been widely criticised for taking decisions that have made the situation worse.

Particularly were the disbanding of the Saddam regime's army and the banning of the former dictator's Baath party. That left tens of thousands of military personnel and civilian officials and bureaucrats without jobs, fueling an insurgency among the minority Sunni community from which most of them came.