Vol. 71/No. 16 April 23, 2007
According to Al-Jazeera TV, marchers carried banners that read: "Down with Bush! Down with America!"
The protest was part of the jockeying by al-Sadr's forcesone of the factions of the Iraqi capitalist class fighting a tit-for-tact war against other Shiite and Sunni capitalists for power and for the country's resourcesto keep their ranks united and maintain influence in Baghdad.
Two days earlier, U.S. and Iraqi government troops fought fierce battles in Diwaniyah, just west of Najaf, to wrest control of the city from al-Sadr's Mahdi militia. The U.S. military reportedly used combat aircraft and ground troops in house-to-house raids. The Mahdi militia is a special target of the crackdown in Iraq, led by thousands of additional U.S. troops being sent mostly to the capital, with the aim of establishing a stable capitalist regime in Iraq friendly to U.S. interests in the region. Al-Sadr's group also works within the Iraqi government, holding 32 seats in the 275-member parliament and heading six cabinet ministries.
The U.S. military says the Shiite militia is showing signs of splintering as some of its leaders fail to heed orders to avoid conflict with U.S. and Iraqi government troops. By lying low himself and opposing a direct fight, al-Sadr hopes to preserve his position among competing Iraqi bourgeois forces.
Mounthir al-Quzueeni, a taxi driver and Mahdi militiaman, told the Washington Post that he had heard the government's request not to fight street battles but would follow a higher order by Sadr's father, a Shiite martyr under the Saddam Hussein regime, to resist occupying forces. "Of course we obey the orders of our leader," said Abdul Razak al-Nidawi, a Sadr spokesman. "But there is a limit to our patience and self-restraint."
In another sign of this splintering, al-Sadr reportedly fired two members of his parliamentary bloc after they had dinner at the home of former Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari, where David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, was in attendance.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military is reportedly winning support from 25 of 31 leading Sunni sheiks in Anbar province in fighting al-Qaeda "terrorists." The Sunni-led Anbar Salvation Front is providing thousands of young recruits to the Iraqi army and police and intelligence to the U.S. military.
Some 30 alleged al-Qaeda members were recently arrested in Ramadi after being fingered by a local sheik. U.S. intelligence officials say the change has come as a result of desperate actions by al-Qaeda, including shaking down truck drivers for oil and gas supplies and extorting shopkeepers.
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Washingtons war on terror undermines ally in Pakistan
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