The mobilization against the American presence continues in Iraq

Demonstration at the call for Moqtada Al-Sadr in Baghdad on January 24. THAIER AL-SUDANI / REUTERS

Under Iraqi flags and banners plotting US President Donald Trump, tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Baghdad on Friday, January 24, with cries of "No to America, no to the occupier". Arriving on charter buses from the outskirts of the capital and the cities of southern Shia, they answered the call of populist Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr to a "Million walk". After a speech read by his spokesman, in which he demanded the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and the cancellation of the security agreements between Baghdad and Washington, saying that he privileged the peaceful and diplomatic way, the crowd dispersed in the calm.

This new coup from the anti-American camp comes as discussions between Baghdad and Washington on the withdrawal of 5,200 American soldiers from Iraq have stalled, despite the adoption of a non-binding resolution to that effect by the Shiite political majority in the Iraqi Parliament on January 5. The US administration has so far denied it. If Mr. Trump told his Iraqi counterpart Barham Salih, Wednesday on the sidelines of the economic summit in Davos, to be willing to withdraw his troops as soon as this withdrawal is carried out without humiliating Washington, his special envoy James Jeffrey said that such withdrawal was not on the agenda.

"Moqtada Al-Sadr wants to prove that he is the only one who can mobilize crowds"

The troublemaker of Iraqi politics, who took the lead of the first parliamentary force in 2018 on a pro-reform and nationalist roadmap, Moqtada Al-Sadr is determined to impose himself as a leader of the resistance against the Americans, a register over which he has a certain legitimacy. Since the assassination of Iranian general Ghassem Soleimani and his lieutenant in Iraq, Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandes, in an American strike in Baghdad, on January 3, the 46-year-old politician has returned to the anti-Americanism he was the spearhead under the American occupation (2003-2011). Until its dissolution in 2007, its militia, the Mahdi Army, relentlessly harassed troops of the American-British coalition. In early January, he announced that he would reactivate it and called on other Shiite armed factions to unite in a resistance front.

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Moqtada Al-Sadr mostly plays his own score. Destabilized too by the anti-power protest that has been raging since October 2019, he reaffirms his ascendancy on the street by demonstrating his ability to mobilize among his millions of supporters within the Shiite popular classes. "Moqtada Al-Sadr wants to prove that he is the only one who can mobilize crowds and fill the political vacuum left by the death of Soleimani and Mohandes, while the country is in the midst of political reconstruction and the armed factions are destabilized ", Hasan Harith analysis, from the Carnegie Center for the Middle East. He intends to give pawns to Iran – where he currently resides and studies in Qom, but with whom relations are up and down – and shows that he can be a reliable partner. But above all, he sends a message to his rivals within the Shiite camp.

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