Iraq shuts Jordan border crossing
2013-01-09 19:00
Baghdad - Iraq closed a border crossing with Jordan on
Wednesday after Sunni Muslim demonstrators blocked a highway to Syria and
Jordan as part of mass protests challenging Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki's delicate power-sharing government.
Baghdad ordered troops to shut the Traibil border post in
the Sunni heartland province of Anbar, where protests erupted in late December
after authorities arrested the bodyguards of a Sunni finance minister, local
officials said.
"Our work has halted completely," Colonel
Mahmoud Mohammed Ali, deputy chief of border police at the crossing told
Reuters.
"There are no trucks, no passenger cars, and
officials at the gate are not working."
Local Sunni officials in Anbar said the central
government had closed the crossing to choke the local economy in an attempt to
put pressure on protesters who have blocked a main highway through the desert
province for more than two weeks.
Thousands of demonstrators are camped out on the highway
near the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, about 100km west of Baghdad, before the
point at which it splits, with one road leading to Syria and another to Jordan.
The protests have become a major test for Maliki, a
Shi'ite nationalist whom many Sunni leaders accuse of marginalising their
minority sect, shoring up his own authority and pushing the OPEC country closer
to Shi'ite non-Arab power Iran.
The latest turmoil erupted as conflict in Syria, where
Sunni insurgents are battling President Bashar Assad who is backed by Shi'ite
Iran, fuels regional sectarian tensions and tests Iraq's own fragile
cross-communal and ethnic balance.
Since the last US troops left Iraq a year ago, the
government made up of majority Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish blocs has been
deadlocked in a crisis over how to share power.
