America’s military presence in Iraq has become a heated issue in the country since a US drone strike killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 3 outside Baghdad’s international airport.
Two days later, parliament voted for all foreign troops, including some 5,200 US forces, to leave their country.
Sadr, long opposed to US troops being in Iraq, decided to take that momentum to the street and called for “a million-strong, peaceful, unified demonstration to condemn the American presence and its violations”.
Several pro-Iran factions from the Hashed al-Shaabi military force, usually rivals of Sadr, have backed his call and pledged to take part on Friday.
The march has rocked the capital and Shiite-majority south, where young Iraqis have demanded a government overhaul, early parliamentary elections and more accountability.
Protesters on the other hand fear that their cause could be eclipsed by Sadr’s power-play, especially in the light of utter violence that has left 470 people dead as well as a spree of kidnappings and intimidation.
“Sadr doesn’t represent us,” one teenager said defiantly late Thursday in Baghdad.
Protester Mariam said Friday’s rally would be “politicized by certain factions or sides”.
“We’re protesting in the people’s name. We’re free. We can’t demonstrate in the name of a particular party or sect,” she said.
When Sadr announced plans for the rally last week, many feared he would hold it near Tahrir Square; the beating heart of the anti-government protests in Baghdad.
But his spokesman Saleh al-Obeidy said late Wednesday that they had chosen the neighborhood of Jadiriyah, near Baghdad University, as the gathering place.
That, in turn, has sparked worry that angry crowds could attack the presidential palace or the high-security Green Zone, which houses the US embassy.
It remained unclear even until early Friday how many people would turn out for the rally and where they would march.
Harith Hasan, an expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said that Sadr was trying to sustain his “multiple identities” by backing various protests.
“On the one hand, (he seeks to) position himself as the leader of a reform movement, as a populist, as anti-establishment,” Hasan said.
“On the other hand, he also wants to sustain his image as the leader of the resistance to the ‘American occupation’,” partly to win favor with Iran, he added.
Tehran has insisted all American troops must leave the Middle East amid the skyrocketing tensions with Washington over recent weeks.
“But Sadr may also have domestic motivations”, Hasan said. As the former Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, despite his resignation under pressure from protests and Iraq’s Shiite religious authority, remains caretaker prime minister upon the failure of the political parties to name a successor.
“This protest will show Sadr is still the one able to mobilize large groups of people in the streets — but it’s also possible he wants other groups to respond by giving him more space to choose the prime minister.” Hasan stated.
