Fear
And Gunmen Rule Najaf
By Rory McCarthy
16 April, 2004
The Guardian
Khalid
Ali sat quietly looking towards the sun-baked golden dome rising from
the shrine of the Imam Ali, almost refusing to notice the crowd of chanting
gunmen who danced through the street before him.
They were a shambolic
bunch of excitable young men, though all were heavily armed with rocket-propelled
grenade launchers, machine guns, and hand-grenades dangling from breast
pockets.
They swear allegiance
to the Jaish al-Mahdi, the militia of Iraq's radical young Shia cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr, whose uprisings across southern Iraq last week shook
the American authorities in Baghdad to the core.
It is a force the
American military has vowed to destroy. Now these gunmen talk of jihad
and boast how they would delight in giving a lesson in the bloody art
of guerrilla warfare to the troops of the US Army's 1st Armoured Division,
currently massing unseen just a few miles away.
This was the scene
yesterday in Najaf, the city at the centre of a stand-off that could
define the future of Iraq. If US troops carry out their threat to launch
an offensive against Mr Sadr's militia, the fight would be bloody and
could unleash an unprecedented wave of violence and uprisings across
the south that could imperil the American occupation.
Few reporters have
entered the city in the last 10 days because of the crisis. Although
the US military described the city as "stable" this week,
it is gripped with fright and still largely in the control of Mr Sadr's
militia.
But it is also ever
more clear that few here welcome the rad ical cleric and the ominous
threat of confrontation he has brought.
For as Mr Ali gently
explained, most of the population of Najaf follow Iraq's most cautious
and conservative Shia clerics, starting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
It means they have little time for the new populist radical.
"We have revolutionary
people and we have political people," said Mr Ali, 27.
"We know all
the people of Sadr are revolutionary people but Sistani is a politician.
Some of the people prefer to remain silent, some of them are not satisfied
with Moqtada. Only a few agree with what he is saying."
It is not hard to
see why that might be. In front of Mr Ali, the square around the shrine,
normally teeming with thousands of Shia pilgrims travelling from Iran,
Afghanistan and beyond, was deserted. Behind him, the two restaurants
he owns were empty for yet another unprofitable lunch-time. Najaf has
not known days this quiet since America's war last year, and shopkeepers
who rely on the passing custom of the crowds of pilgrims are now closing
up early in despair.
All but one of the
several vast wooden double doors that enter into the large shrine complex
at the heart of the city was locked shut yesterday.
"All the people
are scared," said one man, who sat before a cart laden with biscuits
neatly packed in cellophane bags. "When the pilgrims come now,
they visit the shrine and leave immediately. It is so quiet."
Mr Sadr, 30, and
his deputies have been involved in days of negotiations through mediators
with the American authorities.
Perhaps under the threat of America's uncompromising military force,
the clerics have suggested in recent days they may compromise to answer
the demands of the US authorities who want the militia disbanded and
Mr Sadr to face trial on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a
moderate cleric in the Imam Ali shrine a year ago.
Yesterday in a brief
address to journalists from behind a podium in a courtyard that serves
as Mr al-Sadr's "legitimate religious court" in Najaf, his
spokesman said talks were progressing but gave no details.
"The negotiations
are under way and we are reaching a good result," said Sheikh Qais
al-Khazali. Mr Sadr's deputies insisted this week they had withdrawn
their militia from Najaf and the town of Kufa nearby as a sign of willingness
to compromise.
Yet although policemen
manned the final checkpoint before Kufa yesterday, the town was crawling
with armed militia.
On the outskirts
of Najaf a few wary traffic policemen tried to direct the jumble of
cars, but around the shrine in the centre of the city there was not
a policeman to be seen and the gunmen ruled unchallenged, however unpopular
they may be.
Mr Sadr has chosen
his hiding place well. He sits in an office on the corner of the Street
of the Prophet, just yards from the Imam Ali shrine.
Any attempt by the
US military even to approach this most sacred of sites, burial place
of the Prophet Mohammad's son-in-law Ali, would inflame Islamic opinion
across the globe and bring on to the streets of Najaf even those who
have little time for Mr al-Sadr's extremism.
In front of his
office, gunmen from the Jaish al-Mahdi have set up checkpoints blocking
the main roads, where they frisk pedestrians before letting them pass.
Most submit silently, but a few are insulted.
"Who are you
to check me like this? We are the people of Najaf. You are outsiders,"
said one angry man facing down a gunman near the shrine.
Most of the young
armed men are new recruits and nearly all have driven down from Sadr
City, the poor Shia district of eastern Baghdad named after Mr Sadr's
father, a learned ayatollah murdered by Saddam Hussein's agents in 1999.
"I joined the
Mahdi Army a week ago," said Haider Nasser, 23. "I came down
from Baghdad with my own Kalashnikov and God is with us. I came for
jihad first of all and also we are seeking victory, against the Americans
and the infidels and the Jews."
At night, the militia
has been firing on American positions out in the desert on the edge
of the city. The 2,500 troops are not easily seen and only a small convoy
of American armoured personnel carriers and a mine clearer trundled
down the road from Baghdad yesterday. But their threatening presence
has raised the ire of these young men.
"We are not
scared of them, because we have right on our side," said Yusuf
Hamdan Mohammadawi, 38, another gunman recently arrived from Sadr City.
"We have all
kinds of weapons and we will fight even with stones. We are not going
to give them any land in Iraq."
If it came to a
fight, and the US military still insists it will "kill or capture"
Mr Sadr, it would be bloody.
While the parade
of chanting gunmen danced past the shrine yesterday afternoon, others
in buildings off the main square were watching over boxes of heavy ammunition.
A small crowd gathered
by one corner of the shrine to read a statement recently posted and
written by Sheikh Khadum al-Haeri, an Iraqi cleric living in Iran who
is one of the most important intellectual figures behind Mr Sadr's movement.
"It seems the
coalition forces believe only in the language of fire and the grip of
iron," he wrote. "We warn them not to break into the holy
sites and to stop threatening us, or they will open a door that will
never be closed."
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