Iraq: Muqtada al-Sadr's Green Zone demonstration
Baghdad, Iraq - When Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr armed young followers with rocket-propelled grenades to fight US and Iraqi forces, few would have predicted he would re-emerge inside Baghdad's Green Zone as a champion for better government.
Sadr, 42, who is rarely seen outside of Najaf, appeared in person on Sunday outside the barricaded entrance of the sprawling neighbourhood taken over by the Iraqi government.
It didn't matter that his short speech ordering followers to stay behind lacked the oratory of his revered father and father-in-law. Grown men wept at seeing him in the flesh.
And then, for the first time ever, the cleric who led the fight against US troops and Iraqi government forces from 2004 to 2008 walked inside the Green Zone that his followers view as the symbol of corrupt government and foreign occupation.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/iraq-muqtada-al-sadr-green-zone-demonstration-160329190153511.html