Afghans call for end to US occupation

March 23, 2009
Morning Star Online, Sunday 22 March 2009

HUNDREDS of Afghan citizens rallied for an end to the occupation of their country on Sunday after US-led forces killed five civilians in Kunduz Province.

According to Afghan officials, US soldiers broke into the house of Imam Sahib Mayor Abdul Manan before dawn and killed two of his bodyguards and three other employees including a cook and a driver.

The US insisted that the morning raid had targeted a “terrorist network” and asserted that the five killed in the operation were insurgents.

The Pentagon released a statement which asserted that the raid had involved Afghan police and targeted a “terrorist network.”

But a senior Imam Sahib official rejected the suggestion, saying that Afghan police were neither involved in the operation nor aware of it.

And Kunduz governor Juma Din claimed that all the victims of the attack had been local-government employees.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said only that “five of our countrymen” had been killed in the mayor’s house and a spokesman declined to label them as either militants or civilians.

Deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Akhtash said that about 300 people had gathered in Imam Sahib to protest against the raid and the increasingly bloody occupation.

US and NATO officials insist that they are doing all they can to limit civilian casualties and observe that guerillas regularly operate in residential areas.

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Iraq’s most ancient sect in need of protection to escape extinction

March 22, 2009

By Kareem Zair, Azzaman

9mandeans.jpg

uruknet.info, March 21, 2009

One of Iraq’s most ancient sects is on its way to become extinct after nearly 2,000 years of existence.

The Mandeans, the world’s only surviving representatives of Gnosticism, have been living in southern Iraq since the 1st century A.D. But their existence is under serious threat.

Prior to the U.S. invasion, more than 30,000 lived in Iraq, mainly along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and their tributaries.

“We fear for our lives particularly following several fatwas in which we are denied the status of the People of the Book,” said Sheikh Sattar al-Hilou, the Mandeans’ chief in Iraq.

The term ‘the People of the Book’ refers to non-Muslims who have been accorded special protection under Islamic Jurisprudence. The Koran calls them Ahl al-Kitab, a term, which besides Christians and Jews has historically covered the Mandeans.

Religious militias are using these fatwas, or religious decrees, against the Mandeans to force them to enter Islam, Hilou said.

He said he was not aware of anyone of his people converting to Islam despite threats of death.

“As a result more than 22,000 of my community have fled the country,” he added.

He warned the Mandeans would cease to exist as the country’s most ancient sect if the government fails to protect them.

The Mandeans are called in Iraq Subbas and for centuries they have been Iraq’s best goldsmiths and canoe makers.

They are strongly pacifist and are not known to have ever resorted to violence.

Former leader Saddam Hussein was very fond of the sect and had constructed a modern shrine for the Mandeans on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad.

The sect’s rituals, all of great antiquity, cannot be performed without flowing water, hence their preference to live close to rivers and streams.

Hilou said he believed less than 8,000 Mandeans were still living in Iraq and most of them away from their ancestral habitat.

The Mandeans have extensive religious literature. Most important are their Ginza Raba (Great Treasure) and Drasha ed Yahia (Book of John).

John the Baptist is their most revered saint and they date their religion to him but historians believe their faith is of much older antiquity.

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Protests in Washington, Calif. call for war’s end

March 22, 2009

Nafeesa Syeed, Associated Press Writer | Yahoo News,  Sat Mar 21, 2009

Anti-war protesters carry mock coffins draped in American flags across the
AP – Anti-war protesters carry mock coffins draped in American flags across the Memorial Bridge to Arlington, …

WASHINGTON – Before war protesters ended their demonstration Saturday afternoon, several placed cardboard coffins in front of the offices of northern Virginia defense contractors such as KBR Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. as riot police stood by.

“Lockheed Martin you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” they chanted as part of a demonstration that began in Washington to mark the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Arlington County, Va., authorities estimated there were 2,500 to 3,000 protesters.

Organizers from the ANSWER Coalition said more than 1,000 groups sponsored the protest to call for an end to the Iraq war. Carrying signs saying “We need jobs and schools, not war” and “Indict Bush,” demonstrators beat drums and played trumpets as they marched from near the Lincoln Memorial past the Pentagon into Virginia.

Meanwhile, at a similar protest in San Francisco, tension grew after four or five dozen activists surrounded a group of riot-equipped police, throwing sticks and water bottles. Police responded by regrouping in riot formation and physically detaining several protesters who pushed and shoved with officers.

Protest leaders shouted from the stage, urging police to leave. Barriers were quickly erected between police and protesters as an organizer urged calm and the activists started to disperse.

In Washington, protesters demanded that President Barack Obama immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, saying thousands of Iraqis have died and thousands of American troops have been wounded or killed.

“We think it’s especially important for this new administration to feel the pressure from people that we don’t want more war,” said Obama supporter Pat Halle, 59, of Baltimore.

Anti-war activists said even though former President George W. Bush is out of power, they are disappointed with what they see as stalled action from Obama.

“Obama seems to be led somewhat by the bureaucracies. I want him to follow up on his promise to end the war,” said 66-year-old Perry Parks of Rockingham, N.C., who said he served in the Army for nearly 30 years, including in Vietnam.

Obama has said he plans to withdraw roughly 100,000 troops by summer 2010. He promises to pull the last of the U.S. troops by the end of 2011, in accordance with a deal Iraqis signed with Bush.

There were about 138,000 troops in Iraq as of March 13.

In southern California, hundreds of protesters gathered in Hollywood. Among them were peace advocate Cindy Sheehan — whose son was killed in Iraq — Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis and Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran whose story was chronicled in the book and film “Born on the Fourth of July.”

Protesters in Los Angeles were expected to follow a rally with a march and then a symbolic “die in” where they would lie down in a major Hollywood Boulevard intersection to symbolize the soldiers who have died in the war.

Protesters waved signs and sold bumper stickers and T-shirts commemorating the event.

Denise Clendenning, 51, an environmental scientist from Chino Hills, Calif., said she hopes Obama will rethink his strategy to withdraw most of the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and call all of them back instead.

“We all have a lot of confidence in him,” she said, holding two signs that read “Out of Iraq” and “End the War.”

In Washington, U.S. Park Police said no arrests were made. However, there sometimes was commotion among activists.

At one point during the demonstration in Virginia, some taunted police while others urged their fellow protesters not to bother authorities. Some protesters then began arguing among themselves.

This year, the protest in Washington was held on a weekend — a few days after the March 19 anniversary of the war, which began in 2003. Last year’s weekday protest was marked by lower turnout than in previous years.

___

Associated Press Writer Christina Hoag in Los Angeles and Jason Dearen in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Canada’s hypocrisy: George W. Bush permitted, George Galloway banned

March 22, 2009

by Lech Biegalski |

Global Research, March 21, 2009

March to War

Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything


On March 17, 2009, George W. Bush was allowed to enter Canada and give a speech to the business community in Calgary. His arrival was accepted by the Canadian government which completely ignored the Letter to the RCMP issued by the Lawyers Against the War organization.

On March 21, 2009, the BBC reported, “George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, has been banned from Canada on security grounds. /…/ British media reported the decision was due to his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there.”

Shortly after George Galloway was denied entry to Canada to speak at an anti-war event in Toronto, The Canadian Press reported that several organizations expressed their appreciation of the government’s decision:

“The Canadian Jewish Congress quickly issued a statement commending the government for its decision.

“We applaud the Canadian government for keeping George Galloway, a man who thrives on his support of terrorists, out of Canada,” said CJC Co-President Sylvain Abitbol.

“George Galloway publicly brags about his moral and, in some cases financial, support for internationally recognized terrorist organizations including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban. He proudly flaunts his own nation’s laws and dares Western states to prosecute him for his support of terrorists. He is clearly a risk to Canadians,” he added.

“B’nai Brith Canada also endorsed the government’s action.”

Bernie Farber, the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, was available for an interview on the Sympatico MSN Network. Farber described Galloway as a supporter of “terrorism.” By quoting Galloway’s statements out of political context and by presenting Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorist organizations” out of historical context, Farber has shown a very limited ability to indoctrinate his audience. Using President Obama’s words, “The only place that might work is at Hollywood.”

According to The Canadian Press, the organizers of the event expressed an opposite opinion:

“This is a full frontal attack on free speech in Canada, and one that all supporters of civil liberties must challenge,” said James Clark from the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War.

“Kenney’s ban is an unprecedented move to censor someone whose views are critical of our own government’s foreign policy. We will not accept this ban, and we plan on challenging it.”

The political reaction was divided:

In Winnipeg, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he didn’t agree with Galloway’s views.

“We let into Canada all kinds of people who say ridiculous and absurd things and Galloway has said his share of ridiculous and absurd things. The issue … is whether the security services know something about George Galloway that I don’t,” he said.

“The minister of immigration is becoming the minister of censorship,” NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow said. “We don’t have to agree with everything Mr. Galloway talks about.

“But, at bare minimum, they should be allowed to express their points of view so Canadians can make decisions themselves. This is pure censorship and it’s wrong.”

George Galloway has been an outspoken peace activist, an opponent of the war in Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, the occupation of Palestine, and the Israeli massacres in Lebanon and Gaza.

For the record, here is what George Galloway really stands for:

Continued >>

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The Forked-Tongue Eunuchs and Israel

March 22, 2009

By Rami G. Khouri | Information Clearing House, March 21, 2009

If rhetoric is the first step toward action, then one of the rhetorical trends of our time indicating a giant step backward toward inaction is the American and European tendency to describe Israel’s aggressive and illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories in increasingly soft and imprecise terms.

For years, US administrations called Israeli settlements “illegal” and an “obstacle to peace,” but in recent years those terms have been replaced by a mere “unhelpful.” On her first official trip to the region earlier this month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton referred to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian Arab homes in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful.” Earlier this week, the European Union presidency said that Israel’s demolition of homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem “threatens the viability of a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement, in conformity with international law.”

If I were the Israeli government, I would be laughing all the way to my next colonial adventure in destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure, uprooting Palestinian Arabs and replacing them with imported settlers from Israel, or Brooklyn, or Russia, or from wherever the world’s longest running modern colonization venture gets its human ammunition and reinforcements.

It is bad enough when two of the world’s powerhouses pull back from their previous positions of branding Israel’s contraventions of international law and United Nations resolutions as illegal and impermissible and instead call them “unhelpful” or just a threat to a lasting settlement. It is infinitely worse when the United States and the European Union, who spend half their waking hours trying to spread democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world, end up watering down Israeli contraventions of international law so that Israel spends half its waking hours laughing at every American and European official in sight.

The rhetorical downgrading of Israel’s criminality is a problem (assuming it is still okay to use the word criminality to describe undermining the law). That, at least, is what my British and American teachers in primary and high school taught me when I learned English: Use the precise, accurate word when you have it at hand, and do not beat around the bush. Clarity is good for communication.

The first problem with Western obsequiousness to Israel is that it perpetuates the Zionist colonial enterprise in a manner that is harmful to all concerned, including Israelis, Palestinians and Westerners who end up being sucked into our maelstrom of violence. The second problem is that it helps to disqualify the US and EU and others who share their position – such as the UN, increasingly – from playing the role of an active, credible mediator. Arabs and Israelis cannot solve their conflict on their own, and mediation by the Turks or Egyptians can only move things forward so much. A permanent, comprehensive negotiated peace agreement requires intensive American and European involvement in negotiations, consummating an agreement, peace-keeping, and promoting post-peace economic growth. This is impossible if the US and EU have no credibility.

A third problem with the cowardice of sheltering in the safe world of “unhelpful” rather than “illegal and impermissible,” is that those Western powers that choose this route send a terrible message: They deny and ignore the rule of law when it comes to more than four decades of Israeli actions, but enthusiastically promote it when it comes to their aspirations to transform the Arab and Islamic world. A little bit of hypocrisy is standard fare for politicians; but when this becomes elevated to the level of official policy that transcends administrations, decades and generations, it enters the realm of the pathological.

Great powers and noble organizations that disrespect their own rules are not so great in the eyes of a bewildered world that thought that decolonization concluded about half a century ago, but wakes up every morning to find itself the continuing victim of new forms of criminal colonization – in the form of Zionist-Israeli settlers, or Western diplomats whose tongues are so forked they often resemble rattlesnakes walking on two feet.

Colonialism is either legal or illegal, acceptable or criminal. Laws matter or they don’t matter. There is no such thing as “unhelpful” colonialism, any more than there is merely naughty rape, awkward murder, or unfortunate incest. Why is it that those in the West who celebrate and seek to export their commitment to the rule of law find it so hard to adopt both the rhetoric and policies that acknowledge the criminal illegality and political catastrophe that is the modern and continuing Israeli colonial rampage? What is it that makes giants in the West become eunuchs in the face of Israeli deeds?

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

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Afghanistan unrest kills more than 70: officials

March 21, 2009

KABUL (AFP) — A wave of clashes in Afghanistan killed more than 70 people, including 18 policemen and four Canadian soldiers Friday, officials said, amid alarm about the country’s mounting Taliban-led insurgency.

The growing unrest has led Washington to deploy 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, due in the coming weeks, in a move a NATO general said would trigger more violence but would help improve security in the longer run.

The four Canadians, part of the international assistance force, were killed in two separate explosions that also killed an interpreter and injured eight soldiers and an Afghan national, the Canadian military said.

The first incident happened at 6:45 am local time, Brigadier-General Jon Vance, the Canadian commander in Kandahar, said in an address televised in Canada from a base in southern Afghanistan.

“Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of their dismounted patrol in Zari district, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kandahar City,” he said.

A local interpreter was also killed during this attack. Another Afghan national was injured.

The second blast occurred two hours later, killing two more Canadian soldiers and wounding three. Their vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Kandahar City, said Vance.

Nine of the policemen were killed along with a district chief in a clash Friday with Taliban in the northern province of Jawzjan, an unusual battlefield for the extremists, who focus on southern and eastern Afghanistan.

“Today in a clash between Taliban and police, the district chief and nine police were killed,” provincial police chief Khalil Aminzada told AFP.

The fighting was in a district called Koshtipa, on the border with Turkmenistan, he said.

Nine other policemen were killed and three wounded in the southwestern province of Farah when a mob of Taliban attacked them, provincial governor Rohul Amin told AFP. Six of the attackers also died in the fighting, he said.

The clash followed fighting earlier in the day when Afghan and US-led troops were called in after intelligence was received of a plan to attack the governor’s home, Amin said. Seven Taliban were killed in that exchange, he said.

Elsewhere in Farah Friday, a suicide bomber blew up a bomb-filled police vehicle and killed one policeman and wounded two, the governor said. The vehicle had previously been stolen by the insurgents.

The deadliest fighting was on Thursday, when Afghan and US-led troops killed 30 militants in the flashpoint southern province of Helmand, in a district where a key anti-Taliban lawmaker was killed in a bomb attack the same day.

The Afghan army led a joint patrol into an area of Gereshk district where gunmen were known to operate and they came under attack, the US military said in a statement.

The “combined element returned fire with small-arms and close air support, killing 30 militants,” it added.

The toll was the highest from a single clash announced by the military in more than two months, with Afghanistan gearing up for another year of intense fighting after the winter.

The US military also announced Friday that six more alleged insurgents were killed in operations in Kunar, Logar and Helmand provinces.

The escalating conflict in a Taliban-led insurgency has caused concern among the international community trying to stabilise the war-torn nation.

US President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 extra US troops for southern Afghanistan and a top-to-bottom review of his war policy, shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dutch commander Major General Mart de Kruif, who heads NATO troops in the south, said Friday that the arrival of more US troops would trigger a rise in violence but improve security in the longer run.

“I’m absolutely sure that we will see a very important year in RC (Regional Command) South, that we will see a spike in incidents once the US force hits the ground, but the situation will significantly change in a positive way within the next year,” Kruif told reporters by video link.

There are currently 75,000 international soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, about 38,000 of them Americans, to help Kabul fight the insurgency, which last year reached its deadliest point yet.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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Israelis told to fight ‘holy war’ in Gaza

March 21, 2009

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem |The Independent, UK,  March 21, 2009

Many Israeli troops had the sense of fighting a “religious war” against Gentiles during the 22-day offensive in Gaza, according to a soldier who has highlighted the martial role of military rabbis during the operation.

The soldier testified that the “clear” message of literature distributed to troops by the rabbinate was: “We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

The claim comes in the detailed transcript of a post-war discussion by soldiers, publication of which has triggered a military police inquiry into allegations about the use of lethal firepower against unarmed civilians.

The investigation was ordered by the military’s advocate general Avichai Mandleblit on Thursday after the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz published extracts from the transcript describing incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed and property wantonly damaged.

In the fuller version of the transcript published yesterday, the soldier, a unit commander from the Givati brigade, says: “This was the main message and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war.” He recalled that his own sergeant was from a hesder yeshiva, a college combining religious study and military service, who led the whole platoon in prayer before going into battle. The commander added that he had sought to talk to the men about Palestinian politics and society and, “about how not everyone in Gaza is Hamas and not every inhabitant wants to vanquish us”.

After the offensive, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group called for the dismissal of the military’s head chaplain, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, a brigadier general. It said that he had distributed to troops a booklet saying that it was “terribly immoral” to show mercy to a “cruel enemy” and that the soldiers were fighting “murderers”.

The longer transcript conveys a fuller sense of the debate involving graduates from the Yitzhak Rabin military preparatory course. At one point Danny Zamir, the head of the course, says he would have questioned the killing of 180 traffic policemen during bombing on the first day of the operation. One pilot replies: “Tactically speaking you call them police. In any case they are armed and belong to Hamas … during better times they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.”

The latest casualty figures published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights list the names of 1,434 dead of whom they say 926 were civilians, 236 fighters and 255 police officers.

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Sheehan: Our Shame

March 21, 2009

By Cindy Sheehan | AfterDowningStreet.org, March 19, 2009

I remember sitting in my living room, six years ago, watching the “Leader of the Free World” announcing that the United States military had just embarked in “shock and awe” against the country of Iraq.

The images made me physically ill, as they had 12 years before when the criminal’s criminal father was bombarding Iraq.

I was also personally sick with fear as my family had “skin in the game,” our son/brother, Casey. On that night, Casey’s life clock starting ticking down: He had exactly one year and 15 days to live from “shocking and awful.”

Six years and over a million lives later, our military is still shamefully in Iraq. Our “Peace President” has created no positive change there and is in fact extending the length of the deployment of “combat troops.” The country has been ethnically cleansed. Violence is down because everyone there is either dead, displaced or too poor, wounded or frightened to move or continue fighting. Violence is down, but not out, and you can bet there will be a strong US military presence in Iraq until every last drop of oil has fallen into the hands of foreign oil companies.

What about Afghanistan? When will the “peace movement” begin to protest the anniversary (Oct. 7, 2001) of the invasion of that war-torn country? When will we begin saying “illegal and immoral” in connection with Afghanistan and start mourning the dead there? Maybe when US casualties begin to ratchet up as Obama surges US troop presence there? Obama is sending incursions farther and farther into Pakistan every day. From one “dumb war” to another “dumb war,” and the cycle of death will never end for we in the Robbed Class or the poor innocents of that region.

The economic collapse is a very worrisome and immediate problem to so many of us, but we need to remember that the Military Industrial Robber Class Complex is the reason we are in this current crisis and the economic costs of the occupations cannot and must not be separated from the human cost. Whose life clock is ticking away today? How can we allow yet another year to pass?

Every year I say that this will be our last…I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that a very few of us will be demonstrating against these “wars” for years and every year that goes by, fewer of us will be out.

It is our shame that we as a nation complacently sit by and allow the audacity of the atrocities of empire to continue in our names.

Our demands must be the same with the Obama regime as it was with the Bush regime: Troops home completely and immediately. Leave cowardice and compromise to the politicians: we in the movement must never compromise or sell out the values of peace with justice. Or if we have already sold-out, we must buy-back…we need everyone!

Many have already given up or have been co-opted by the Democratic Party or the false specter of “hope.” Most have never even protested other than bitching on blogs or yelling at the TV when Bush or Cheney came on spewing their lies (Cheney is still at it).

Some will never give up. Here’s to you! I honor your commitment to peace, no matter who is the current warmonger occupying the Evil Office (oops, I sorta meant “Oval Office”)

Hasta la victoria, siempre!

March 19, 2009

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CIA reveals it has 3,000 pages of documents relating to destroyed interrogation tapes

March 21, 2009

John Byrne | The Raw Story
Published: Friday March 20, 2009
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The Central Intelligence Agency disclosed Friday that it has 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed Friday evening.

The agency, however, says they won’t make them public or provide them to the civil rights group. The disclosure came as part of a lawsuit.

The CIA says they incinerated the tapes to protect the identities of agents involved in the interrogations. Their destruction came at the same time a federal judge was seeking information from Bush administration lawyers about the interrogation of alleged al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA also refused to publicly disclose any witnesses who may have viewed the destroyed tapes or had custody of them prior to their destruction.

“The government is still needlessly withholding information about these tapes from the public, despite the fact that the CIA’s use of torture is well known,” Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a release. “Full disclosure of the CIA’s illegal interrogation methods is long overdue and the agency must be held accountable for flouting the rule of law.”

The CIA could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the information came to light late Friday and was sent out by the ACLU in a release at 6:44PM ET. Organizations and agencies often release unfavorable information on Friday evenings, because American newspapers have the lowest circulation on Saturdays.

More from the ACLU’s release issued Friday follows.

In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of the tapes in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all records requested by the ACLU. That motion is still pending.

The agency’s latest submission came in response to an August 20, 2008 court order issued in the context of the contempt motion. That order required the agency to produce “a list of any summaries, transcripts, or memoranda regarding the [destroyed tapes] and of any reconstruction of the records’ contents” as well as a list of witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes or retained custody of the videotapes before their destruction. The CIA will provide these lists to the court for in camera review on March 26, 2009.

Earlier this month, the CIA acknowledged it destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations. The tapes, some of which show CIA operatives subjecting suspects to extremely harsh interrogation methods, should have been identified and processed for the ACLU in response to its Freedom of Information Act request demanding information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. The tapes were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, appointed by former President Bush and Congress, which had formally requested that the CIA hand over transcripts and recordings documenting the interrogation of CIA prisoners.

The government’s letter to U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York is available online here.

The ACLU’s contempt motion and related legal documents are available online here.

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US Flag-Burning Marks War Anniversary in Iraq

March 21, 2009

Sadr Supporters Rally for Release of Detainees

Antiwar.com

Posted March 20, 2009

Protesters marched through the streets, burning American flags and chanting “no, no for occupation.” It was yet another reminder of just how much resentment remains in Iraq over the American military presence.

The supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in numerous Iraqi cities after Friday prayers, calling on US and Iraqi forces to release detained members of their faction who “were not involved in acts of violence against Iraqis in accordance with the directives of Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr.”

The protests come in the wake of the six-year anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, at a time when many are wondering how much longer the American presence will continue and how much longer the Iraqi populace will have to wait for a return to normalcy.

Related Stories

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author

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