BAGHDAD, 4 April 2008 — Moqtada Sadr yesterday called for one million Iraqis to march against US occupation next week after his Mehdi Army militia battled US and government troops.
The government said it would not attempt to block the march if it was peaceful although Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who ordered a crackdown on militia in the southern city of Basra last week, threatened more strikes against Sadr’s strongholds.
A statement released by Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf called on Iraqis of all sects to descend on the southern city.
“The time has come to express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honorable people,” it said.
The demonstration, called for the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad on Wednesday, raises the prospect of unrest coinciding with a politically sensitive progress report to Congress by the top US officials in Iraq.
“If his intention is to get a whole lot of people together and go and make trouble in Najaf, I don’t think that is going to be very popular,” US Ambassador Ryan Crocker told a briefing.
US forces called in helicopter strikes during a clash with suspected Sadr gunmen yesterday in the city of Hilla and bombed a house in Basra overnight, after days of relative calm that followed a truce Sadr announced on Sunday. The truce ended six days of fighting that spread through southern Iraq and Baghdad.
Officially, the Iraqi government is sanguine about the march. Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf told Reuters: “The right to hold a peaceful demonstration and express opinions is guaranteed by the constitution, and we don’t mind as long as the demonstration is peaceful.”
But Al-Maliki has been uncompromising toward the Sadrists, fellow Shiites who helped install him in power in 2006 but broke with the government last year.
The prime minister told reporters the Basra crackdown could be repeated elsewhere, listing the Shula and Sadr City districts, Sadr strongholds in the capital.
“Basra was a prisoner and now it has been freed,” Al-Maliki said. “Other cities need the same battle, and also Baghdad in areas where people are still in the hands of these gangsters.”
A senior member of Sadr’s bloc in Parliament said the prime minister “must stop playing with fire, or the Sadr bloc and the Mehdi Army are ready for this battle, a crucial battle.
Sadr has millions of followers and was able to summon tens of thousands of people on to the streets in Baghdad for demonstrations during last week’s fighting.
