BAGHDAD (AFP) — Thousands of Shiite followers of firebrand anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gathered in Baghdad on Friday to protest a security accord that would allow US troops to remain in Iraq until 2011.
The crowds swarmed into central Baghdad's Firdoos Square, where a large statue of Saddam Hussein was torn down by US troops a few weeks after the March 2003 invasion that toppled him.
The protestors hung an effigy of US President George W. Bush carrying a suitcase labelled "security agreement" from the abstract statue that now stands in the center of the square.
A sign pinned to the effigy -- which was later pelted with plastic bottles and torched along with US and British flags -- reflected the mood of the protestors: "The security agreement is shameful and humiliating."
The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), approved by the Iraqi cabinet on Sunday after nearly a year of hard-nosed negotiations, would govern the status of some 150,000 US troops when their UN mandate expires at the end of the year.
Parliament is expected to vote on the measure next week.
The deal would require all foreign forces to depart Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June 2009 and to withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011.
It has drawn fire from Sadr's followers, who are against signing any pact that would legitimise the US "occupation."
"No, No, to the agreement!" the crowds chanted beneath a huge banner with a picture of bloody, cuffed hands reaching out from a map of Iraq and three keys labelled with American, Israeli, and British flags.
Sadrist sheikh Abelhadi al-Mohammedawi led the thousands of protestors, virtually all of them men, in Friday prayers before reading a statement from Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran.
"If they don't leave the country I am going to be with you to make them leave in a way that suits you, as long as it doesn't go against the religion," Sadr said in the statement.
"And if they leave the country and you fear that the enemy coming from outside will transform your land into a battlefield, I and my followers will be a shield for Iraq."
Huge portraits of the young, black-turbaned Sadr glared down at the crowd from surrounding buildings as Iraqi soldiers took up positions on rooftops and patrolled the edges of the protest.
"We are following the call of Moqtada al-Sadr to pray and demonstrate against the accord and against the occupation," said Nawfal Faraj, 36, a civil servant.
"This agreement is not clear. It allows the occupation forces to stay in Iraq."
Sheikh Talal al-Saadi, the imam of Baghdad's revered Kadhimiyah shrine and one of several clerics in the crowd, said he too had heeded Sadr's call to demonstrate against the "humiliating" agreement.
"The agreement allows the occupiers to stay three years in Iraq, while (president-elect Barack) Obama wants to withdraw them within 16 months. We want the Iraqi government to be patient and to wait for Obama's order," he said.
Meanwhile, a much smaller demonstration in favour of the agreement was held in volatile Diyala province, northwest of Baghdad, where local Sunni and Shiite tribes have allied with the government to drive out insurgents.
A couple hundred people gathered near the provincial capital of Baquba, including several tribal sheikhs in flowing robes and headscarves, holding portraits of Maliki and calling on parliament to approve the agreement.
The pact has been loudly debated on the floor of parliament in recent days, where the 30-member Sadrist bloc has sought to derail it with legislative manoeuvres, shouting and desk-pounding.
"We are trying to convince the MPs to vote against the agreement and I know that a lot of them, deep in their hearts, are against it," MP Falah Shanshal told AFP on the sidelines of the Baghdad demonstration.
But the SOFA -- which enjoys the support of the assembly's large Shiite and Kurdish blocs -- appears likely to win the simple majority needed for approval in the 275-member body.
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