Like many Americans, I watched the fall of Saddam’s statue in Ferdous square on TV in 2003. I was in Suleimaniya, northern Iraq. For two months, I had been reporting from the north with approximately 200 other journalists. We interviewed American troops after they parachuted on to a muddy airfield near Erbil, followed American special forces and Kurdish pesh merga guerrillas when they teamed up to attack Ansar al Islam, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi’s first jihadi group in Iraq, and watched as the American military pushed toward the capital from the south. As a journalist, it was frustrating not to be in Baghdad at that moment, but it was still riveting to watch. Dozens of Kurds at the Suleimaniya Palace hotel, including the wait staff, who were decked out in black suits, gathered around a big screen TV in the lobby. There was no conversation, everyone was glued to the TV. Then the noise began–a few beeps here, a few toots there. Within half an hour, dozens of Kurdish families began parading through the central part of Suleimaniya honking their horns and cheering. Some women waved colorful scarves from the car windows and the cleaning staff at the hotel waved back with white sheets.
But there’s little cause for celebration in Iraq these days. The massive protest today came after a bloody weekend where 10 American soldiers were killed. More worrying for the long haul: the thousands of protesters that showed up in Najaf today are supporters of the hardline cleric Moqtada al Sadr. The same Moqtada al Sadr that Paul Bremer promised to “capture or kill” in 2004. Three years later, it almost seems like the roles are reversed: Bremer’s gone and Sadr is one of the most powerful players in the country.
Sadr called for the protest through a statement read out at Friday prayers about 10 days ago and deliberately scheduled it on the day of the anniversary. He told his followers to carry Iraqi, not party, flags, in an attempt to reach out across the sectarian divide. Thousands of people headed south from Baghdad yesterday in buses and pickup trucks and they jammed the streets between Kufa and Najaf this morning. Some of Sadr’s political representatives, including Nassar al Rubaie, the head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament, also marched. “Today is the call for freedom and resistance,” Rubaie said at the rally. “After four years of the occupation of Iraq, what did Iraq gain apart from hundreds of thousands of dead and injured people, no services, no electricity and no water.”
Sadr didn’t show up at the rally today and hasn’t been seen in weeks. The U.S. military claims he’s in Iran, but his representatives deny that. Wherever he is, this rally was an attempt to flex muscle. In a one-page statement issued yesterday, Sadr urged Iraqis to put aside their differences and focus their attention on the real enemy: the American occupier. “The armies of darkness, represented by the occupation troops headed by the great evil, America, started planting division among the citizens of the united country, either directly or through its agents and immoral followers,” Sadr writes in the statement. He makes his plea: “My brothers in the Imam Mahdi Army and my brothers in the security services enough disputes and fighting - you the Iraqi Army and police don’t be dragged after the occupier for it is an enemy-fighting among brothers is not right in anything, and being dragged into America’s filthy strife is not right.” And then comes the punch: “Allah has fated to you patience in front of the enemy and unify your efforts against them and not against the sons of Iraq.”
Though the statement, which bears Sadr’s personal stamp, could be interpreted in slightly different ways, it’s relatively safe to assume that his more radical followers may interpret this as a green light to start attacking the American military, a replay of the bloody battles the two fought in 2004. Even though the statement is riddled with fiery language, the overall message–putting aside differences and uniting–is a sign that Sadr’s organization may be fragmenting into smaller, and more volatile, groups. Near the end of the statement, Sadr writes, “If you love the Sadr movement and follow your leadership then listen and obey.” The demonstration today showed that, four years after the fall of Baghdad, tens of thousands of people are listening, and obeying.
credit: Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Getty Images
