"They will not leave," said Abed Sahib Mohammed Hadi, an elderly man in a beige suit. "If they wanted to leave they would never have built those huge bases.
"We don't even know what's in the pact," he added. "It's never been presented to the people."
The pact has been explained to the public at least twice by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whose support propelled it through the Cabinet on Sunday and onto the floor of the parliament. Legislators loyal to Sadr tried to prevent the reading of the pact in the parliament, leading to a brawl in the chamber Tuesday and stalling debate.
If a vote is not held early next week, before a scheduled holiday, the parliament could have trouble meeting the Dec. 31, 2008, deadline when the United Nations mandate governing the presence of U.S. troops here expires. If the pact isn't passed by then, American forces will have no legal basis for being in Iraq.
On Friday, the crowd that swarmed central Baghdad was far different from the one that gathered around the Hussein statue in April 2003 and cheered as a U.S. tank helped yank down the structure. Chants of "No, no, no to the occupiers!" rose from the protesters. Iraqi flags fluttered in the breeze, along with giant posters of Sadr. Even after prayers had begun, men with colorful prayer mats under their arms streamed in from distant neighborhoods to join the gathering.
No official estimate of the crowd was given, though it appeared to be in the tens of thousands.
There was a heavy Iraqi military presence, but it remained on the edges of the crowd and kept watch from rooftops along the route, including from the mosque overlooking Firdos Square. Residents stood on their balconies or leaned out windows to watch the surging crowd.
After the effigy was dragged to the ground, protesters began jumping on it, even stamping out flames that erupted after someone set it afire.
It is doubtful that opponents can muster enough votes in parliament to kill the pact. But their vocal opposition and Friday's protest show that Maliki does not have the broad-based backing for the pact that he had sought. Passing it by a thin margin would make it difficult to mend the political divisions that have hobbled Iraq's government. It also could give hard-line members of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia an excuse for resuming attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces after months of relative quiet.
"This is a normal consequence: more fighting," said Mohammed Ismael, a 17-year-old student from Sadr City -- the sort of young man ripe for recruitment into the Mahdi Army. "We are against this agreement and we will resist it in any way we can."
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tina.susman@latimes.com
