Iraqi troops fired in the air to disperse Sunni protesters on Monday, as the two-week-old protests gathered steam.
The protesters are allying themselves with foreign allies among the Sunni Arab states, mostly in Jordan, Turkey, and the Gulf.
Islamists,
who are demanding a Sunni autonomous region similar to that of the
northern Kurdish region, dominate the protests, while events in Syria
are affecting events in Iraq.
Iraqi street protests, gaining
energy or perhaps even inspiration from the Sunni-led rebel uprising in
neighboring Syria, are putting pressure on Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki. In the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi troops fired shots over
the heads of hundreds of protesters, and in the Sunni province of Anbar
at least 5,000 protesters had gathered.
In response, Maliki has
said that he would not tolerate protests indefinitely and gave a speech
on Sunday where he said that the protests were a “foreign plot,”
according to reports from the albawaba website.
Iran’s Press TV
recently quoted Maliki claiming that al-Qaida terrorists and Ba’ath
party members from the former regime are trying to spark violence.
Maliki’s “foreign plot” most likely refers to the Sunni Arab countries in Jordan, Turkey and the Gulf.
According to the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly,
“Turkey has headed the list of countries accused of meddling in order
to destabilize Iraq. On Sunday, Maliki accused Turkey of encouraging
Iraqi Kurds to secede from Iraq.”
The article also states that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also coordinating their actions in Iraq with Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan said last week that “extremist Shi’a authorities are ruling Iraq.”
The
weekly also reported that a member of the Saudi royal family stated in
an article published last week that “Iranian intervention is tearing
Iraq apart and endangering the countries around it.”
The paper
quoted Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and
ex-ambassador to the US and Britain, as stating, “Western and Iranian
support for Nuri al-Maliki’s government, which is controlled by Iran’s
Basij militia, must be withdrawn, enabling the Iraqi people to determine
freely their own destiny.”
The report also notes that Qatar is
working to stoke the flames using its Al-Jazeera television station.
Thus, many of the Sunni countries see the conflict in Iraq as a proxy
battle with Shi’a Iran.
Prof. Meir Litvak of the Department of
Middle Eastern History and the Director for the Alliance Center of
Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University says that the Sunnis are
emboldened by the Syrian rebels in Iraq, and that “many of the jihadis
in Iraq probably moved to Syria, and once Assad falls will probably
return to Iraq.”
Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, writing in Sunday’s London-based Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat writes
that Maliki’s main concern is to hold onto power and that he is acting
like Saddam Hussein. He goes on to state, “Al-Maliki will be ousted, but
only after he destroys Iraq in a manner similar to al-Assad in Syria.
The
Islamist led Sunni protesters, some waving Saddam- era Iraqi flags,
have blocked a highway to Syria since late December and called for the
toppling of Maliki in “Arab Spring" - like protests. These events came
after Maliki’s forces arrested bodyguards of Sunni Finance Minister
Rafaie al-Esawi. The protesters see Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government as
their adversary and see it as being allied with Shi’ite-led Iran.
Jamal
Adham, a tribal leader from Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit said, “We will
never relent. Enough of Sunnis living in Iraq like outsiders. This time
it’s do or die for us.”
Reuters quotes senior Sunni sources as
saying that the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which is part of the Muslim
Brotherhood, are dominating the protest campaign to create an autonomous
Sunni area.
“Sunnism is our slogan and a region is our goal,”
senior cleric Sheikh Taha Hamed al-Dulaimi told demonstrators in Anbar
in a video on his website.
On Saturday, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri,
the most senior member of Saddam Hussein’s government still at large,
told protesters to continue until Maliki falls. He referred to Iraq’s
Shi’ite-led government as the Safavid- Persian alliance, which
controlled Iran and parts of Iraq from the 16th to 18th centuries.
“It
is a clear plan to destroy Iraq and annex it to Iran,” he said. “We
warn those traitors, agents and spies... who support the dangerous
project...
that the national resistance will confront them before Maliki and his evil alliance.”
In
the meantime, Sunni leaders are trying to create a federal region,
which according to the Iraqi constitution can be established by a
referendum.
Surprisingly, Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the
leader of an opposing Shi’ite faction, came out in support of the
protests. Litvak thinks that this is because “Sadr is a political rival
of Maliki and feels that Maliki has become a dictator.” Sadr also
remembers when Maliki cracked down on his forces.
Meanwhile,
Sunni Arab countries are showing their support for the Sunni-led
protests. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia warned Iraq that the country “will
not stabilize until it starts handling issues without sectarian
extremism,” stated Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.