Demonstrations mark 4th anniversary of Baghdad’s fall

BAGHDAD – Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched peacefully through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall. Demonstrators were flanked by two cordons of police as they called for U.S. forces to leave, shouting “Get out, get out, occupier!”\nSome marchers strode along trying to rip apart an American flag; others marched across an American flag rug flung across the road.\nSecurity was tight across Iraq, with a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in Baghdad starting from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated the day as a national holiday, rescinding its weekend order that had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.\nThe Najaf rally was ordered by Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric who a day earlier issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces, and argued that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.”\nThose marching were overwhelmingly Shiite, but Sunnis – who are believed to make up the heart of Iraq’s insurgency – have also called for an American withdrawal.\n“The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people,” Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr’s bloc in parliament, told an interviewer as he marched. “After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.”\nA senior official in al-Sadr’s organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a “call for liberation.”\nAl-Sadr did not attend the demonstration and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq.\nIraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics – including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.\nCol. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman and aide to the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis “could not have done this four years ago.”\n“This is the right to assemble, the right to free speech – they didn’t have that under the former regime,” Boylan said. “This is progress, there’s no two ways about it.”\nMonday’s demonstration marks four years since U.S. Marines and the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division swept into the Iraqi capital 20 days into the American invasion.\nForeign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Monday that “mistakes were made” after Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted four years ago.\n“The main mistake was a vacuum left in the fields of security and politics, and second mistake was how liberating forces became occupation forces,” Zebari told Al-Arabiyah television.