Iraq Shi’ite pilgrims gather, civil war warning

By Sami al-Jumaili

KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite
pilgrims gathered in the sacred Iraqi city of Kerbala on Sunday
for a religious event held under tight security as a top
politician said Iraq was already in a sectarian civil war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, writing to mark the
third anniversary of the invasion, said to disengage from Iraq
now would be like handing Germany “back to the Nazis” in 1945.

In Baghdad, Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders were still
struggling to form a national unity government more than three
months after elections, raising fears that a political vacuum
will play into the hands of insurgents and fuel violence.

Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said civil war was
already a reality and that Iraq was nearing the “point of no
return” on a path toward all-out military conflict.

Flying flags and flailing themselves, a sea of people
filled roads to Kerbala ahead of Arbain, mourning the dead of
the 7th century battle that confirmed a schism in Islam that
has left Iraq dangerously divided between Sunnis and Shi’ites
today.

Aside from a mortar that landed near a garage and caused no
casualties, the event, which centers on Monday evening, was
calm. But the blast was a reminder of Sunni Arab suicide
bombers who have turned previous Shi’ite religious events into
carnage.

Allawi, a secular Shi’ite appointed under U.S. supervision
in 2004 and whose major offensives against both Shi’ite and
Sunni guerrillas failed to halt insurgencies, warned that Iraq
had already plunged into sectarian civil war.

“It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing
each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country,
if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what
civil war is,” he told BBC television on Sunday.

“Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not
reached the point of no return yet. But we are moving toward
this point. We are in a terrible civil conflict now.”

He said that if Iraq were to crumble, sectarian violence
would spread throughout the Middle East with Europe and the
United States also feeling the impact.

WIDER DANGERS

Those concerns are shared in Washington, which is also
keeping a close eye on Iraq’s strategic oil-rich but dangerous
neighborhood, home to some close allies and worst enemies.

A defiant Shi’ite Iran has nuclear ambitions and both Sunni
Saudi Arabia and Jordan have suffered from a deadly al Qaeda
campaign to topple pro-Western Arab governments.

“Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the
modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the
Nazis,” Rumsfeld wrote in the Washington Post ahead of Monday’s
anniversary of the invasion on March 20, 2003.

Wary that an attack on the Shi’ite pilgrims could unleash a
new wave of bloody reprisals, the Kerbala authorities deployed
at least 8,000 Iraqi police and soldiers in the city.

Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to fiery Shi’ite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr were also taking part in security precautions which
include sandbags set up around Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles)
southwest of Baghdad.

Local officials say they expect as many as 2 million people
to attend the mourning ritual on Monday evening.

Under pressure to raise hopes in Iraq and back home that
stability is possible, the U.S. military carried on with what
it called the biggest helicopter transport of troops since the
invasion. But there have been few signs of significant fighting
or arrests in the operation near Samarra, north of Baghdad.

U.S. troops killed nine people, including a family, after
their patrol was ambushed in a nearby town early on Sunday,
Iraqi police said.

Police said three of the victims were a 13-year-old boy and
his parents who were shot dead when U.S. soldiers entered their
house in the Sunni town of Duluiya, about 90 km (60 miles)
north of Baghdad.

“A patrol of U.S. forces was attacked by gunmen using
rocket propelled grenades,” Duluiya police said.

The U.S. military said it was checking the report.

There are 133,000 U.S. troops in Iraq trying to maintain
security and train local security forces to keep a lid on the
violence. Both countries reject claims Iraq has already slid
into civil war.

But U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been speaking
frankly about avoiding the point of no return after the bombing
of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra last month pushed the country
closer than ever to full-blown civil war.

(Additional reporting by Sami al-Jumaili in Kerbala and
David Clarke in London)