Almost 20,000 men and women - twice the number reported by al-Jazeera - marched across central Baghdad, while others repeated the move in different cities of Mesopotamia yesterday. The demonstrators, from all walks of life and from all religions and ethnicities of Iraq, shouted one slogan in Arabic: "La' la' lil irhab. Na'am, na'am lil dimucratiya." That is: "No, no to terrorism. Yes, yes to Democracy!"
Taking the streets
of the former capital of the Ba'athist prison, Iraqi Shiite, Sunni, Kurds and
Christians bonded together against the "enemies of peace." Responding to the
call of the newly formed "Popular Committee against Terrorism," tens of
thousands of citizens slapped Saddam and his former regime in the face. Speakers
at a central square declared clearly:
"We will resist the
return of the dictatorship to power. With or without the Americans, we are now a
resistance against the Baath and the foreign Terrorists."
The masses, finally
taking their courage in their hands, have exposed their deepest feelings. Many
intellectuals, writers, women activists, students were seen in the front lines
of the demonstration. "We will not allow the remnant of the intelligence service
of Saddam destroy this new experiment of democracy and freedom," said one leader
live on al-Jazeera television. The scene was more reminiscent of Prague and
Budapest than any other recent battlefield.
More significant yet was the
open participation of labor unions. Unexpectedly, Iraqi workers were the most
excited participants in the march against Wahabi and Baathist Terror. "We need
factories, we need peace, no fascists, no fanatics," sang the laborites, as
though they were in Manchester or Detroit. But there was even a more
significant element in the marches. Cadres from the "Hizb al-Dawa al Islamiya" -
a rather conservative Islamic "movement" whose members were walking under the
same banners of resistance to terrorism. Why? Well, we need to understand the
Shi'a drama. By the day, mass graves are being uncovered with thousands of
bodies of men, women and children, all massacred by the Saddam security. How on
Earth would the Shiite majority ever accept the return to power of the
Sunni-controlled Ba'ath Party?
Let's note two matters about these
demonstrations. First, they were almost not reported in much of the Western
media. Until late last night in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, news focused
on the operations against Coalition forces. But the Iraqi people's
genuine calls for democracy were not heard, not seen, and not factored in the
game. The BBC and CNN downplayed the events, while al-Jazeera mislead the
Arab world about them. The jihad network spent more editorial
energy undermining the objectives and the credibility of the event than
reporting it.
But two others ironies were also hanging over Baghdad last night. One was the link between President Bush's drive to push for democracy in Iraq and the region, and the other was the silence of those who were supposed to drive that wagon around the world. Observers drew my attention to the fact that yesterday's march came after another smaller one, which took place the day after the U.S. President visited their city. They also noted that many of the banners were pasted from Bush's speeches to the Arab world last month. I was invited to make a link. Eventually I saw it. The workers, women and students in Iraq didn't mention the name of the Presidential visitor, but they heavily quoted his words. What's the message here? You can read it on the mushrooming underground websites in the region. People want freedom and democracy, even at the hands of aliens (what the Left calls "occupation" and the Iraqis call "liberation").
This leads us to the second irony. While the underdogs are barking freely in the streets of Baghdad, challenging the Ba'athist shadows and the jihadist terrorists, human rights and democracy groups in the West lack the courage to come to the rescue of their fellow progressive forces in the Middle East. As a group of Iraqi students told me, "Isn't it terrible to see that Western elites came here to demonstrate in support of Saddam against the Coalition, and when we took the streets to demonstrate against the Saddam war crimes, they didn't show up?"
Yesterday was a benchmark in Iraq. Maybe a small step in the long journey toward human dignity, but all genuine marches for freedom are of eternal value.
Walid Phares is a Professor of Middle East Studies and Religious Conflict and a Terrorism expert with MSNBC.