BAGHDAD — At the spot where U.S. forces helped Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, protesters Friday tore down an effigy of President Bush and set it afire during a demonstration over plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011.
People began arriving at central Baghdad's Firdos Square just after sunrise, some having walked for hours across the capital. Most came from Sadr City, the stronghold of the Shiite Muslim cleric who called for the gathering, Muqtada Sadr.
Iraqi army snipers were perched on rooftops along the broad avenues leading to the square on a traffic roundabout decorated with fountains and greenery. The effigy of Bush, in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, dangled for hours as the crowd, which stretched for several blocks, knelt in prayer and listened to clerics denounce the Status of Forces Agreement.
The pact, which parliament is expected to vote on next week, requires American combat troops to pull out of Iraqi cities, towns and villages by the end of next June and sets a Dec. 31, 2011, deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. But some people interviewed in the crowd insisted that the pact did not have any withdrawal deadlines. Others said that whatever the pact said, they did not trust the U.S. or Iraqi governments to abide by it.
"They want to keep extending and extending," Bassim Hamoud, dressed in a lavender shirt and pressed beige trousers, said as he neared one of the Iraqi army checkpoints set up on the edge of the rally. "If there was a concrete time limit, we would go for it."
Asked what time limit he wanted for a U.S. withdrawal, Hamoud replied, "We want them to leave today."
Protesters' comments reflected both the lack of knowledge of the pact and the distrust many Iraqis feel toward their government and the Americans as a result of unmet promises since the U.S.-led invasion. At the time the Hussein statue was toppled, most Iraqis weren't expecting that nearly six years down the line, they would still be living in a city with spotty electricity, sewage running through the streets of their neighborhoods, military checkpoints choking traffic and bombs going off regularly.
Loyalists of hard-line anti-U.S. leaders such as Sadr say that the violence would decrease if the Americans left and that Iraqis would be able to fix their own problems. As long as U.S. forces stay, they say, Iraq never will be sovereign.
