Hundreds of Iraqi Shias rallied in Baghdad on Saturday to demand the immediate withdrawal of Saudi troops from Bahrain, which has sparked reminders of Iraq's own sectarian divide. Shias in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran have expressed anger over the movement of forces from Sunni Arab states into Bahrain to help its Sunni royal family squash pro-democracy rallies by majority Shias.
Protesters in central Baghdad on Saturday chanted "no to al-Saud". Some carried banners which read "Saudi occupation should end" and "Why is there Arab silence towards the massacres committed in Bahrain?" "We advise (our) brothers in Saudi Arabia to immediately withdraw from Bahrain," Hadi al-Amiri, Iraq's transportation minister and head of the Badr Organisation, which arranged the protest, said in an address to demonstrators.
Badr is the former armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), a main faction in Iraq's Shia alliance, which also includes that of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Maliki has criticised the intervention by Gulf states in Bahrain and said it could spark a sectarian war in the region. Like Bahrain, Iraq has a Shia majority that complained for decades of oppression under a Sunni ruling class which is dominant throughout the Arab world. Since the 2003 US-led invasion which toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and enabled the Shia majority to take power, Baghdad has had uneasy relations with Sunni neighbours.
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