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Page added on January 4, 2013
Iraqi Forces Fire Into Air as Anti-Maliki Demonstrations Spread
Iraqi forces fired into the air to disperse protesters as demonstrations spread to eight regions demanding that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki share more power.
Thousands of protesters gathered in the capital, Baghdad, and Ramadi, Falluja, Tikrit, Mosul, Samarra, Kirkuk and Diyala, according to footage shown by Al Jazeera television. “The people want the downfall of the regime,” chanted a crowd in Mosul, echoing a slogan repeated in protests that led to the fall of the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya.
Maliki warned in a statement on his website that “foreign agendas” were trying to divide the country and stir sectarian infighting in Iraq, the second-biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. One of his main opponents, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, called for Maliki’s resignation and early elections in a statement read by the local al-Sharqiya television station.
Violence and political clashes in Iraq have increased since the end of 2011 when the U.S. pulled out the last of the troops it deployed since the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Allawi’s Sunni-backed al-Iraqiya coalition boycotted parliament and Cabinet sessions for several weeks last year to denounce what they say is a power grab by Maliki, a Shiite ally of neighboring Iran. Tensions have also run high between the Maliki government and Iraq’s Kurds, mainly focused on disputed land and control of the nation’s oil wealth.
There were no reports on casualties as security forces fired warning shots and beat a number of protesters in Mosul, Al Jazeera and a witness reported.
Friday Prayers
“They used batons against people who had just finished Friday prayers in Sultan mosque, and then fired in the air to force them to go back and prevent them from joining other protesters,” Omar Thanoon, a 32-year-old government employee, said by phone from Mosul.
Opponents of Maliki have been holding street protests in various regions with mostly Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations. Many Sunnis, Kurds and followers of Shiite leader Moqtada al- Sadr have asked Maliki to share more power.
Maliki’s opponents have also asked for the release of prisoners. The Justice Ministry issued a statement yesterday to announce that 11 women detainees were freed..
The opposition has also called for a general amnesty and the revocation of laws they say are being used to target Sunnis accused of being terrorists or members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, which has been banned since the U.S.-led invasion.
Government soldiers clashed for the first time with Kurdish forces on Nov. 16, leaving one person dead. The Kurds have since halted crude exports as agreements with the federal government over payments for oil sales faltered.
Iraq holds the world’s fifth-biggest crude reserves, according to BP Plc (BP/) statistics that include Canada’s oil sands.
5 Comments on "Iraqi Forces Fire Into Air as Anti-Maliki Demonstrations Spread"
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jan 2013 8:08 pm
Mosul=Kurds. Kurds do not like Shiites, they like Kurds. Turkish Kurds, Iranian Kurds, Syrian Kurds, you name it. Mosul is also oil. If you have oil, you have money to buy weapons, so you can bring all these Kurds into one Kurdish state. They tried it begore under Saddam, but he gassed the Kurds by the thousands, so that did not work. But it is unlikely that Malikki will ever resort to these kind of measures, so the Kurds can try it again.
GregT on Fri, 4th Jan 2013 9:45 pm
The only thing that will hold Iraq together, is a brutal dictator.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jan 2013 11:59 pm
Artificial diverse states like the USSR, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Czechoslovakia all were hold together by a dictator or dictatorial system. Remove the dictator and pooofff says the country.
In the future, highly diverse states like the US can only be held together by a dictatorial system. Rest assured that they are working on it.
BillT on Sat, 5th Jan 2013 1:24 am
Arthur, you are correct. It is already happening. Obama is a dictator in all but name. He has written his own laws (his masters, rather) and they are called Executive Orders. He now has the power of life and death over Americans anywhere. He commands the largest military on the earth. In the next 4 years, there will be steps taken to lock in a Police State including another 9/11 type event to make the sheeple beg to be ruled. All that stands in his way are 300,000,000 guns in the hands of the sheeple. But, he is working on changing that problem. I don’t see democracy ever coming back to America.
Arthur on Sat, 5th Jan 2013 2:35 am
Maybe, maybe not. The jews openly admit that they lead the effort to disarm Euro-America:
http://forward.com/articles/168063/after-newtown-jews-lead-renewed-push-on-guns/?p=all
On the other hand arms sales are surging as we speak, outright booming, which is a sign that the ‘sheeple’ don’t fancy a kosher ritual slaughter, just like the Russians experienced between 1921-1953 and which the Germans initially managed to stave off by kicking the mob out of the country into the Ukraine. Americans on average are between the Germans and the Russians, so it is an open question how this struggle is going to be played out, but it is inescapable that tragedy is waiting for the US, real tragedy. The Euros are squeezed between the zionist rulers and the 150 million invaders who are going to function as the perfect proletariate for a bolshevik revolution 2.0. The battlecry will not be ‘workers of the world unite’ but ‘races of the world unite’. For hundred years Euro-America suffered blow after blow and after every blow jpower increased: FED, the crash, the New Deal, WW2 (completely masterminded by the Roosevelt gang, Stalin and their Churchill tool), JFK murder (done by Yitzak Rabin personally), 1965 immigration act, Reagan opening the GOP for a neocon takeover as well, 9/11. Now they try to pull off WW3 via Iran.
But it is not entirely hopeless… there are the guns, there is the internet, giving the people a CIA of their own, there is 9/11 truth, there is WW2 revisionism. And thanks to Putin Russia is not in the zionist camp.