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Anti-War Protesters Riot in Amman［L.A.TIMES］
Demonstrators throw rocks, scuffle with police and smash car windshields in downtown neighborhoods and a Palestinian refugee camp. Police protect the Israeli embassy.
By Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writer
10:39 AM PST, March 28, 2003
AMMAN, Jordan -- Clashes and short-lived riots flared up throughout the afternoon today in Amman and several other Arab cities as tens of thousands of demonstrators poured from Friday prayers to rampage in the streets.
Protesters in Amman threw rocks, scuffled with police and smashed car windshields in downtown neighborhoods and a Palestinian refugee camp. Thousands stormed toward the Israeli embassy, but were blocked by police.
It started at midday, when men arranged themselves on the stained cement streets in arcs radiating out from Amman's King Hussein mosque. They knelt on broken cardboard boxes and worn scraps of carpet, and turned the soles of their feet to the spring sun. From within the mosque floated the voice of the prayer leader. Braiding the verses of the Koran with political platitudes, he preached Arab unity and a resurgence of Islam.
"There is a foreign occupation now attacking the Arabs. The Arab nation is being humiliated," the man said. "We are not religious enough. God warned us of the enemy."
The men bowed their heads. Riot police eyed them from nearby buses.
"If we unite as Arabs," the prayer leader said, "we will win this war."
Standing at the hem of the prayers was a lanky young man with a wispy beard. Firas Fadah, 26, moved to Amman from Iraq nine months ago, and found work at a supermarket. On Saturday, he said, he and his 18-year-old brother will board a bus to Baghdad.
"We've been through a lot of wars, but this is the worst," he said. "It's a foreign occupation. I don't want foreigners to change our regime."
Once the war is over, he said, he'll come back to Amman to work. "If I'm alive," he added.
Prayers ended with the prayer leader urging the people to "unite" and "rise up." Worshippers rose to their feet, pumped fists in the air and chanted: "We'll give our blood and soul for Iraq!" and "There's no God but God!"
The high voice of a woman rose over the crowd. Over and over, she cried, "I hope Saddam wins!"
"Americans think Arabs are animals, they think we don't think or know anything," said antique dealer Mohamad Sinawe, 42. "But this is injustice. Iraqis are a simple people. They don't have anything, and they're being murdered."
As the crowd thickened and surged through the downtown market, the riot police rushed forward. Swinging clubs and table legs, they forced the demonstrators back. The men scrambled through alleys to escape and raced down the boulevards.
The anger was palpable one minute, elusive the next. Police moved through the city all afternoon, swinging their clubs to drive apart rowdy street corner congregations. By late afternoon the marketplace around the King Hussein mosque was calm -- shopkeepers rolled up the metal shutters and hung their strings of bananas, shoes and pans; women walked their children through the shaded lanes.
With their cries against Israel, the United States and Britain silenced by police, Jordanians were left muttering about their own government's restrictions on the demonstrations. Jordan requires demonstrators to procure permits -- but scores of renegade protests have erupted this week as tempers shortened and anti-war angers roiled. And organizers have warned that the protests will get more violent as the war drags on.
"The people were just trying to express their opinions about the war," said Mandoor Ajarimi, 25, watching police dispell the crowd. "The people are peaceful."
Large-scale demonstrations took place in other Arab cities including Tripoli in northern Lebanon, where 30,000 protested, and the Palestinian city of Gaza. Town squares and streets in other towns from Bahrain to Egypt were packed with citizens vehemently objecting to the war.
In Egypt, between 5,000 and 10,000 people assembled peacefully outside Cairo's al-Azhar mosque. Among the slogans heard voiced was: "With our soul and our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for Iraq."
Some of the demonstrators who filled the main square in Nablus on the West Bank burned an effigy of President Bush and an Israeli flag. Others held the flag of Iraq or pictures of Saddam Hussein.
Times Staff Writer Roger Vincent and Reuters contributed to this report
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