The
Shia of Najaf fear the yoke of US occupation
By Phil Reeves
in Najaf
The Independent
16 April 2003
The message
could not have been clearer if the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani
himself had broadcast it from the battery of loudspeakers that hang
above the breathtaking blue mosaics lining the walls of his mosque.
The powerful
cleric's multitude of followers in Najaf, one of the holiest Shia cities,
will not accept an Iraqi government run by anyone they see as a stooge
of the occupying Americans.
They are not
interested in retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the rumbustious
former missile contractor leading the effort to rebuild Iraq, who
150 miles further down the Euphrates was chairing the first meeting
of selected Iraqi opposition groups. Objecting to the American general's
role, the largest Shia party, the Iranian-based Supreme Council for
the Revolution in Iraq, refused to go.
And they have
nothing good to say about Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi businessman, convicted
fraudster and favourite of the Pentagon hawks. After decades in exile,
he was spirited into Nasiriyah last week by US forces and has since
formed his own militia.
Bearded men
drawn by the sight of a foreigner who, for once, was without an Iraqi
government snoop and who had not swept into Najaf with the US tanks,
crowded around yesterday, desperate for these views to be heard.
As we sat in
the sun and the swirling dust, their theme was the same, time and again.
They were delighted the Americans had got rid of Saddam Hussein, whose
thugs had oppressed the Shias, killing clerics and closing mosques,
and whose social engineering had left them in profound poverty.
The US and Britain
must fulfil their obligations under Geneva Conventions as occupiers,
they said. The Allies must establish order, end the looting and provide
power, medicine, and food supplies. Then they must leave.
"Iraq has
to be run by people from Iraq, people who lived in Iraq and not from
the outside," said one of the crowd, Favel Mohammed Roda, a fiery-eyed
man in a white robe. "Then Americans must get out." The others
shouted agreement.
Iraq's Shia
community is seething, consumed by fears about its place in the new
Iraq. Being the majority, they talk hopefully of democracy. Yet they
are haunted by the suspicion of conspiracies to split their ranks. Some
here say these plots are the work of die-hard Saddamists; others suspect
the hand of the CIA, suggesting the US is moving to prevent them becoming
the most powerful force in the land by sheer numbers.
Such suspicions
were thriving yesterday in the narrow lanes of Najaf. A crowd of men,
the heads of Shia families, had donned their robes and turbans and travelled
in from outlying villages. They gathered outside Ayatollah Sistani's
headquarters yards from the golden-domed Iman Ali shrine, brandishing
banners proclaiming the unity of Iraq's Shias. They had come to defend
the cleric after learning his premises had been surrounded by armed
men, who had demanded he leave Iraq in 48 hours.
The cleric was
nowhere to be seen, but his son said he was safe. "There is no
government and there are a lot of weapons in the hands of dangerous
people," he said.Six days ago, one of the ayatollah's close associates,
Abdul Majid al-Khoei, was stabbed to death by a mob in the shrine.Mr
Khoei was an acquaintance of Tony Blair and Jack Straw, and had returned
to Iraq after 12 years in exile in London, bearing the weight of Washington
and Whitehall's hopes that he would help lead Iraq's Shias towards a
pro-US government, and away from the magnetic pull of neighbouring Iran.
His US links
may have cost him his life. "He is so close to the Americans he
might as well have driven in on an American tank," Mr Roda said.
But he may also have been killed because he went to the shrine with
a cleric loathed by Najaf's Shias. They said the cleric had ties to
the dictator's killers who murdered another revered ayatollah, Mohammed
al-Sadr, in 1998. And in the town of Kut, a strongly anti-American cleric
called Said Abbas this week took control of city hall with 30 armed
men.
Outside, several
hundred Iranians living in Iraq protested against the American-led invasion.
They singled out the man they know the Pentagon's hardliners favour.
"No to Chalabi!" they shouted.