The Washington Post,
Jobless Protesters Confront Ukrainian Troops and Local Police
KUT, Iraq, Jan. 13 — The boom of exploding dynamite packets, followed by the rat-a-tat of returning assault-rifle fire, echoed all Tuesday morning through the streets of this gritty, once peaceful city on the Euphrates River, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Angry demonstrators confronted Ukrainian army tanks and Iraqi police at City Hall plaza for the second day in a row. A block away, Ali Aziz, 35, a stocky, out-of-work laborer, watched the battle from behind a schoolyard wall, red-eyed and shaking with anguish.
“I have three children to support, we are living in one rented room and I have to hold up a bucket to the ceiling when it rains,” he said. “I helped protect the city offices during the war, but now the old thieves are back inside, and they only give jobs to their friends.” The protesters were “out there to defend all our rights,” he said.
Officials and witnesses said at least a dozen civilians and police were injured Tuesday, the fifth day of anti-government protests since Jan. 6 in southern Iraqi cities with largely Shiite Muslim populations.
The southern Shiites were systematically repressed during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and until recently they largely supported the U.S.-led invasion and the appointed interim government. But in the past week, protests have broken out in the cities of Kut, Amarah and Basra.
There were also several violent incidents in the capital Tuesday. After a roadside bomb blew up an Army vehicle, killing one soldier, U.S. troops fired on a car, killing a man and a 10-year-old boy. Two mortars exploded near the central Baghdad Hotel, incinerating several cars.
The southern demonstrations coincided with a growing split between U.S. officials and a prominent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who demanded Monday that direct elections be held soon. U.S. authorities plan to hold regional caucuses to choose a national assembly but do not want to schedule elections until mid-2005.
By most accounts, Tuesday's protests in Kut were sparked by local and personal grievances. The crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators, who tried to storm City Hall and break into a bank, included recently dismissed soldiers and laborers who have long been jobless. Their wrath was directed largely at local and regional officials who they said demanded bribes or were former members of Hussein's Baath Party.
“I was a policeman before the war. When I went back to rejoin my station, they said I had to pay $150. Every single department is asking for bribes, and they are all followers of Saddam,” complained Mohammed Ali, 23, whose head was wrapped in a bandage after two days of confronting the security forces. “People have gone without jobs for a year, and they are ready to tear down buildings.”
Some Kut residents asserted the protests were instigated by extremist Shiite groups who had access to grenades and dynamite, which were thrown at Ukrainian occupation troops on Monday and Tuesday. But the protesters insisted that no political or religious group was behind them.
As the mob grew increasingly aggressive Tuesday, surging toward government buildings and setting off explosions, a local Shiite cleric, Laith Rubaie, intervened at the request of Iraqi police. At about 1 p.m., Rubaie called for calm over a loudspeaker and drew the demonstrators toward his downtown mosque for prayers.
“We are with you, we are beside you, we will demand jobs for you, but please don't use grenades and weapons. . . . You are frightening the women and children,” Rubaie called over the din of agitated, argumentative voices. He said he agreed with the crowd that some police were “corrupt Baathists,” but he said others were “caught in the middle. They don't want to shoot our own people.”
Throughout the day, Iraqi police fanned out across the city, with pistol-brandishing agents careering around corners in unmarked cars and riflemen darting from block to block with their faces hidden by scarves.
Ukrainian occupation troops sat in tanks surrounding City Hall and lay on nearby rooftops with rifles.
Police said a half-dozen officers had been wounded during the two days of demonstrations, and protesters said they had taken several wounded friends or bystanders to hospitals, including a schoolgirl they said was shot in the leg Tuesday.
Many residents — including doctors, school principals and police officers in riot gear — said they were concerned about the violence but also sympathized with the protesters. They said the combination of high unemployment and widespread official corruption had driven many people to despair.
Some people complained that occupation authorities had been slow to deliver promised jobs and services, but most blamed Iraqi officials, including both former Baath Party members who managed to retain niches in the bureaucracy and former exiles who were appointed to national and regional posts by U.S. officials but have done little to help the public.
Although calm had been restored by mid-afternoon, the city remained tense and residents said that violence could easily flare again if authorities did not respond to the need for jobs. Aides to Rubaie said he had spoken with provincial officials and then promised the crowd a response to its demands within two days.
“The Shiite people are peaceful and dignified, but when their rights are stolen, no foreign troops can stop them,” said Abdul Karim Mustafa, 43, a physician who was watching the protests from several blocks away. “These people are not terrorists, but they are desperate enough to die.”
