BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims hit the streets of four Iraqi cities Tuesday, calling on the United States to hand over Saddam Hussein to be tried as a war criminal and demanding a bigger say in their political future.
The fresh rallies followed a march through Baghdad Monday by tens of thousands of people from the majority Shi'ite community demanding direct elections to decide who controls Iraq when the United States hands back power in June.
Many of Tuesday's protesters were supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand religious leader who has expressed support for Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Sistani and his followers, long persecuted by Saddam, have proven a thorn for the United States by opposing its plans to let regional caucuses appoint a transitional authority to take power at the end of June, instead of letting all Iraqis vote.
"We demand elections or we will bury every American here," said one Shi'ite cleric, Sattar Jabbar. article
Okay, the rest in short: Double-face has had to ask the UN to bail us out of the snare he got us into - asking for a team to go into Iraq and get these demanders of democracy to back off and permit a U.S. plan to go forward wherein representatives would be "hand picked" by provincial councils. Kofi Annan says he'll have to wait to see if a delegation comes back with a report that it's safe over there. (Sure it is.) And the UAE and Qatar have agreed to write off Iraqi debt.
From Juan Cole:
The Financial Times is reporting that British authorities in Basra now believe that there are no procedural obstacles to holding open elections in Basra of the sort that Grand Ayatollah Sistani has called for: Whether this is true or not, it is hard to see the British announcement as anything but payback for the way the CPA has ordered them about like lackeys since the fall of Saddam. The statement puts Mr. Bremer in a very difficult situation.
The British may in part been driven to this announcement by pure fear. They appear to have upped their estimate of the number of protesters last Thursday from 30,000 to 3 to 10 times that.
...I am hearing rumors, purportedly coming out of Najaf, that there will be big Shiite demonstrations throughout Iraq this coming Friday. One reason I am pessimistic that Sistani will back down is precisely that he has gone to the streets. He must have known that crowds will be hard to rein in if some basic modicum of his demands are not met, even if he himself is willing to compromise.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
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