ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday called on his supporters and Iraqi protesters to conduct large-scale demonstrations against the presence of American troops.
The leader called for "a million-strong, peaceful, unified demonstration to condemn the American presence and its violations," he tweeted on Tuesday.
Anti-government protesters have been in the streets for more than three months, demanding regime change, constitutional change, and better lives in a country where poverty and corruption are widespread.
Security forces have responded with deadly violence, including live rounds and military-grade tear gas.
More than 520 protesters and security force members have been killed, and at least 17,000 people have been injured since protests began in October.
Sadr’s statement follows a non-binding resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament asking the Iraqi government to end the presence of the US-led Global Coalition against Islamic State (ISIS) forces.
“We will not bow for anyone except Allah” Sadr added in his statement, adding that the “movement” will be the start of a series of protests and strikes in order to return “dignity and sovereignty” to Iraq.
Iraq is currently playing battlefield to skyrocketing US-Iran tensions, with the US conducting airstrikes on Iranian and Iran-backed targets in Iraq in response to a spate of rocket attacks against bases hosting US forces in the country.
US airstrikes targeted and killed powerful Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi) on January 3.
The assassination was preceded by a US attack on the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia on December 29, killing 25 militiamen.
Sadr, head of the Sairoon Allliance, the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament, founded southern Iraq’s Mahdi Army in 2003. His militia killed and injured scores of American servicemen.
He disbanded the militia in 2008. However, he announced the reactivation of the Mahdi Army after Soleimani's death, referring to himself as the “head of Iraqi National Resistance.”
Soleimani’s assassination has proven a tipping point for the country’s Iran-aligned Shiite political class, including Sadr.
Other officials have echoed Sadr's calls for US forces to leave Iraq, and the region as a whole.
Earlier on Tuesday, Iran’s Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi told Rudaw during at a Sulaimani business fair that US troops “need to leave the entire Middle East.”
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