Low turnout as Quds Day protesters drive over US and Israel flags in Iraq

Protesters on al-Quds Day over the weekend rode US-made Harley Davidson motorcycles over US and Israeli flags in Iraq, according to locals in Mosul.

“How ungrateful,” wrote one man on Twitter. “They are driving over the American flag with Harley Davidson bikes.” Commentators, however, pointed out the bikes were actually made by Honda.

The photos posted online were taken by Ali Alathary and showed motorcycles driving over US flags and several Israeli flags. In another city in Iraq, an undated photo also showed a Chevy driving over a US flag. That photo, which resurfaced this year, appeared to actually be from Kirkuk’s al-Quds Day events in 2018.

It came out again amid the 2019 al-Quds Day Iranian-backed protests which seek to highlight the importance of Jerusalem and are generally a festival of anti-US and anti-Israel hatred. The message is clear: Iran uses Iraq and its supporters in Iraq to support anti-Americanism.

Photos from Basra in southern Iraq by Hussein Faleh Raheem showed similar scenes of Iraqi militia members parading while stomping on and riding over US flags. The parades included members of the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Shaabi, a series of armed groups, some affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Some of the militia members performed stunts, such as building human pyramids. Somewhere near by a motorcycle parade also drove over US and Israeli flags. It is difficult to find Israeli flags in Iraq, so the locals had to make them from scratch.

In Kirkuk, more members of the PMU also paraded. Some Kurds, commenting on social media, felt the appearance of the Shi’ite militias, including members of the Badr Organization, was controversial and a form of Iranian “muscle flexing.”

In October 2017, the Iraqi army, backed by Shi’ite militias, retook Kirkuk from Kurdish Peshmerga forces who had defended the city during the ISIS war. The paramilitaries parading in Kirkuk appeared to include men in white gowns with mock-suicide vests on, looking more like Hamas parades in Gaza than the usual Iraqi scene.

Tensions are heating up in Iraq between the US and Iran. Although Iraq says it does not want to be used in any future conflict, a rocket was fired near the US Embassy last month. In addition, reports indicate that the Badr Organization has said Iraqis will resist if the US fights Iran.

Although Iranian-backed groups marched in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and elsewhere, the turnout did not seem very large. In Mosul especially, which is a mostly Sunni city, only dozens could be seen in a city that was once Iraq’s second largest in population.

Clearly the Iranians and their supporters on the ground were only able to galvanize limited support in some areas. After years of conflict and war, many Iraqis appear more interested in other issues than walking on US and Israeli flags so that Iran can brag about its support for Jerusalem.

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