"Yankees stay in Iraq and get killed." So read the placard carried by school teacher Iman Badawi during the anti-war demonstration in downtown Cairo held to mark the third anniversary of the war against Iraq on 20 March. Some 500 demonstrators, including activists, journalists, politicians and university professors, joined Monday's protest, chanting anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti- dictatorship slogans for more than two hours. Police officers watched from a distance but did not intervene while dozens of police trucks, parked in a fenced off building site off Tahrir Square, maintained a discreet but visible presence. Ostensibly to protest the occupation of Iraq, the demonstration's organisers --mainly socialist and Nasserist activists -- had a wider agenda. One of the first names to be lambasted by the crowd was Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a staunch advocate of both regime change in Syria and the disarming of the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah. "Jumblatt, you slaughterer, we won't give up our weapons," shouted one young man who was being carried on the shoulders of another. "Jumblatt you collaborator, we won't negotiate with Israel!" Seismic regional changes -- most notably the electoral success of Hamas -- combined with pressures on Hizbullah and Syria and last week's attack by Israel on a Palestinian prison in Jericho and the abduction of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Ahmed Sadaat, combined to cast their shadow over the demonstration. Marvelling at the silence of Arab governments over recent developments protestors shouted, "the Arab League is a league of clowns, where is Ahmed Saadat?" "Cowardly Arab governments," the chants continued, "[Gamal] Abdel-Nasser said it before, liberation comes by the gun, not through negotiating with criminals." "Liberation" and "resistance," shouted the protestors, to the beat of two enormous drums. The organisers, as well as demonstrators, were unequivocal in offering full and unconditional support to resistance and Islamic groups battling occupation. "Hold on there Hamas!" they shouted, "a thousand greetings to Hizbullah, Hassan Hassan Nasrallah!" as they cheered, clapped and waved Iraqi and Palestinian flags. "Resistance is not terrorism" they chanted, and "America is the source of terrorism." The demonstration occurred two days before the inauguration of the fourth Cairo anti-war conference, which begins in the Press Syndicate today and continues till 26 March, under the title 'With the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance... against imperialism, Zionism and globalisation".
