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Iraq Spirals Toward Civil Conflict After Shiite Shrine is Destroyed

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 21:00 CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq _ Unknown assailants destroyed one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines Wednesday in the northern city of Samarra, triggering widespread street protests by enraged Shiites and a rash of retaliatory attacks against Sunni mosques that sent sectarian tensions soaring in this already dangerously divided country.

Political leaders appealed for calm, warning that the attack on the al-Askari shrine was an attempt by terrorists to inflame religious passions and incite civil strife.

"We are facing a major conspiracy that targets Iraq's unity," said President Jalal Talabani. "We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war."

President Bush also urged restraint, joining world leaders in condemning the attack and promising U.S. assistance to rebuild the shrine.

"Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought to achieve by this act," he said in a statement.

But the tension was palpable, and with Shiite leaders calling for more protests, Iraq seemed to be teetering dangerously on the brink of the civil conflict that many have long feared is inevitable.

In Baghdad, shops shuttered early, motorists scurried home and long lines formed at bread shops after Shiites, many of them carrying Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, took to the streets by the tens of thousands in the neighborhoods of Karrada, Sadr City, Kadhamiya and Jadriyah.

Across the city, at least 25 Sunni mosques were attacked, some with grenades, others with small arms fire. Three were burned to the ground, according to the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party. At least six Sunnis were reported killed.

Militia members from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, drove around in jeeps, brandishing weapons.

Reflecting the seriousness of the crisis, the reclusive Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani allowed himself to be shown on television, meeting with other religious authorities in the holy city of Najaf in his first public appearance since the Shiite uprising there in August 2004.

Al-Sistani later issued a statement calling on Shiites to stage peaceful demonstrations, and "not to be dragged into committing acts that would only please the enemies, namely, the sectarian sedition."

But al-Sistani also warned that if government security forces prove unable to halt attacks against Shiite targets, "then the believers themselves are able to do this, with God's help."

Iraq's Shiite majority has long heeded al-Sistani's calls for restraint in the face of terrorist attacks against Shiite targets, but fears are mounting that this attack will prompt many to take matters into their own hands.

The leaders of the three main armed Shiite groups, the Badr Organization, the Sadr movement and the Fadhila Party, called on their followers to gather in the Baghdad district of Kadhamiya on Thursday to march on Samarra, an insurgent stronghold and mostly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Only the instructions of the marjeya, or religious authorities, are stopping Shiites from exacting their own revenge against Sunnis, warned Shiite legislator Khudair al-Khuzaie.

"If the marjeya lift their hands, we will see a civil war that never ends," he told Iraq's al-Sharqiya TV.

The government ordered all Iraqi security forces on high alert and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari declared a three-day period of mourning.

The shrine in Samarra contains the tombs of the 10th and the 11th imams of Shiite Islam and is located near the spot where the revered 12th and last leader recognized as the descendant of the Prophet, Imam Mehdi, disappeared in the 9th century. Shiites believe that he will one day return, at the same spot, giving the site a special significance.

Details of the attack on the shrine were sketchy, but reports from Samarra indicate it was carried out by a group of well-trained commandos who were wearing police uniforms. They stormed the compound, tied up the guards and then set an explosive charge that brought the gold-domed tomb of the shrine tumbling down onto the graves of the two imams.

The charge that the assailants were wearing police uniforms touches on a sensitive issue for Shiites, who have been angered by recent allegations that Shiite death squads targeting Sunnis have been operating within the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry.

After the attack, enraged Shiites thronged the site, brandishing the turbans, shields and swords of the dead imams that they salvaged from the rubble. Similar protests erupted nationwide as word of the attack spread.

In Basra, protesters torched the offices of the Sunni Islamic Party and burned the shrine of a 7th century Sunni religious leader. In Najaf, the capital of Shiite Islam, protestors thronged the narrow streets around al-Sistani's offices demanding that he allow them to "fight the criminals who committed this crime."

Abbas Mahdi Hamza, 30, a builder who was among those demonstrating in Najaf, said he blamed the government for failing to protect the shrine.

"We elected this government and now we demand them to leave," he said.

In mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, Sunnis cowered at home.

"My son is sick, but I can't take him to hospital because I'm afraid to go out, because everyone knows I'm Sunni," said Nabil al Daraji, 45, from his home in the Cairo neighborhood, where a mosque was attacked with a rocket and small arms fire.

In Zayouni, men jumped out of a black car and fired a rocket at the Tiba mosque, slightly damaging the dome, said Abdul Wahhab al Wazzak, 63, who lives near the mosque.

But standing in his driveway, he vowed that Iraqis would not allow themselves to be provoked into fighting each other.

"I am a Sunni, this neighbor is Shiite, that one is Kurdish," he said, gesturing around the street. "There are people looking to create civil war, but they will not succeed."

In Arasat, an upscale Shiite area, U.S. soldiers guarded the Sunni Khudairi mosque after gunmen in a pickup truck fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the mosque's entrance. It lodged in the doorway and failed to explode.

"People who say that because this is a Sunni mosque it was a Shiite group that did it, I don't buy that," said Brig Gen. Dan Bolger, who oversees the U.S. effort to train the Iraqi army. "There are people looking for opportunities to stir things up, but the folks here are not at all riled up. They just want things to settle down."

But political leaders, nonetheless, said they feared tensions could spin out of control.

"The tensions are extremely high right now and unless the religious leaders do something to calm it down, things might get very bad," said Ayad Samarraie, a top official with the Islamic Party, who said there have been 69 attacks against Sunni mosques and other targets across the country.

The flare-up came just two days after the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, urged Iraqis to form a non-sectarian national unity government grouping all the major factions, a call that offended members of the current Shiite-dominated government.

Abdul Aziz Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of Iraq's biggest Shiite parties, said Khalilzad's comments may have encouraged the attack on the shrine.

"His statements ... gave the green light to terrorist groups," Hakim said. "Certainly he bears some responsibility for what happened."

In a joint statement, Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, who commands multinational forces in Iraq, blamed the attack on al-Qaida in Iraq, the group led by militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

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(Chicago Tribune correspondents Hassan Jarrah in Najaf and Nadeem Majeed in Baghdad contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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