Continued Clashes in Karbala Lead to Closure of Shrines



al-Zaman: On Sunday, Shiite religious authorities in Karbala formally closed the shrines of Imam Husain and his half-brother Abu'l-Fadl Abbas, to pilgrims. This rare procedure has not been implemented for decades. It was felt necessary because although militiamen (including Badr Corps) loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani hold the shrines, they have been infiltrated recently by gunmen of the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, who are using them for cover in their fight against the Americans.



Local Karbala clerical leader Shaikh Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi had called for a demonstration on Sunday, and despite the poor security situation, some 1500 are said to have come out for it briefly. They were demanding that both the Mahdi Army and the US military depart Karbala. The march was infiltrated, however, by members of the Mahdi Army, who began chanting pro-Muqtada slogans. The other marchers grew alarmed that they might be mistaken for Sadrists by the US army and fired upon, so they quickly dispersed and the march thus collapsed.



The US sent 10 tanks into downtown Karbala on Sunday, positioning them not far from the two shrines. US troops clashed with Mahdi Army fighters in Karbala, and the Sadrists were forced to withdraw. Before they did so, they lobbed mortar shells and fired rocket-propelled grenades at US troops.



Rings of thieves took advantage of the breakdown of law and order in Karbala, looting the storehouses belonging to the wholesale merchants in the al-Dahanah Market. They also looted all the shops in the market. The streets and government buildings were deserted, according to eyewitnesses.



In Kufa, nine trucks full of food and medicine arrived from Fallujah, as an expression of support for Muqtada al-Sadr by the Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar province. The Sadrists had joined in sending a convoy of supplies to Fallujah when it was being besieged in early April.



A spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islami Revolution in Iraq urged US forces to remain in Iraq until order was restored. SCIRI is a rival for power in the Shiite areas with Muqtada al-Sadr.



Hamzah Hendawi of AP offers a useful set of observations about the rising popularity of Muqtada and offers some insight into what Grand Ayatollah Sistani is thinking:

' Some remain confident the senior clerics will prevail at the end. One person with close links to al-Sistani's office said the ayatollah has concluded that speaking out now would only turn Shiite against Shiite. ''Powerful tribal leaders and supporters come to his office daily asking him to permit action against Muqtada, but he is refusing,'' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. '

But what I heard from my sources is that Paul Bremer was the one who nixed the idea of using tribal levies to deal with the Army of the Mahdi.

Italians, Pushed out of Nasiriyah, Tell Bush to Back Off

10 Italian Troops Wounded, 20 Iraqis wounded, 2 Killed



More heavy fighting at Nasiriyah on Sunday. AP reports that the Mahdi Army in Nasiriyah has tossed the Italians off their own base, just as had been done to the Ukrainians at Kut in early April. The present feat is more impressive, since the Italian contingent is larger and better trained.

AP says, "Two Iraqi fighters were killed and 20 were wounded in battles in Nasiriyah, mostly at two bridges crossing the Euphrates River, residents said. The Italian troops evacuated as their base came under repeated attack. Portuguese police were called out to support the Italians, seeing action for the first time since the force of 128 deployed to Nasiriyah in November, a Portuguese duty officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least 10 Italians were wounded, one critically, contingent spokesman Lt. Col. Giuseppe Perrone said by phone. He said the Italians relocated to the nearby Tallil air base. Elsewhere in Nasiriyah, a convoy transporting the Italian official in charge of the city, Barbara Contini, came under attack as it neared the headquarters of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, Perrone said. Two Italian paramilitary police were wounded."

But Suleiman al-Khalidi of Reuters scooped all the other wire services by focusing on the Italian domestic fallout from the fighting in Nasiriyah and the Abu Ghuraib photos.



Khalidi points out that the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal has severely undermined the US in Italy, where the public was always much more ambivalent about the war than the rightwing government of Silvio Berlusconi. (Italy's force is the third biggest in Iraq, after the US and Britain, and is deployed around Nasiriyah). Berlusconi has sent out his foreign minister, Franco Frattini, to upbraid the US.

"Frattini . . . told Washington it must mete out "severe and public" punishment for crimes that have dominated Italian media. Nine Italian soldiers were wounded on Sunday in Nassiriya, where Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia has staged what U.S. commanders call a "minor uprising" across the south provoked by U.S. assaults on its main bases in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. "We have asked the Americans to avoid frontal attacks on Iraqi holy cities and to hand over military control of these cities to Iraqi forces," Frattini wrote in a newspaper. The Italian official running the administration in Nassiriya, Barbara Contini, was in a convoy which came under fire."

Then, Ahmad Chalabi, the long-time expatriate Iraqi politician who was once the darling of the Defence Department neoconservatives, weighed in:

"Chalabi, once the voice of exiled Iraqis opposed to Saddam Hussein and himself a Shi'ite, sharply criticised U.S. tactics. He said Washington's demands that Sadr let himself be arrested for murder was complicating Iraqi efforts to resolve the crisis. "Enforcing Iraqi law should not be a U.S. military objective," Chalabi said. "I wonder why the price for enforcing an arrest warrant should be more than 1,000 Iraqi lives?" . . . Sadr aides accused British troops of murdering prisoners and mutilating their bodies. The guerrillas buried 22 men they said died at British hands near Amara on Friday. "

The Italians and Chalabi are telling the Bush administration publicly what the British have been telling it privately for weeks. This Ahab-like fixation on getting Muqtada al-Sadr at all costs may well completely discredit the United States in Iraq, given the damage already done to the sanctity of the shrine cities. Can you imagine what the elections are going to look like this coming winter if they are held? Won't all the candidates in the Arab areas actually be running against the United States?



By the way, the Berlusconi government is not brighter or less arrogant than that of Bush. It is just that the Italians have a small, exposed force, and they know it is US policy that is endangering it, and they know that the policy grows out of unnecessary and adventurist goals.

Patel on Religious Authority



For a quick primer on religious authority in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, from an academic who has been living there for the past year, see David Patel's piece, just published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Patel writes,

"Freed from state control, religious authorities—drawing on their moral authority and extensive mass communication networks, and benefiting from the weakness of secular forces—quickly filled the political void created by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. A year later, these authorities remain the principal shapers of public opinion among most Iraqi Arabs."

Iran Strongly Condemns US Operations in Najaf, Karbala



Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran finally broke his silence about the US military operations in Najaf and Karbala on Sunday. I had presumed that his earlier caution was a function of his support for Sistani and al-Hakim versus Muqtada al-Sadr. But apparently the rage in Iran has reached the point where he felt he had at least to speak out.

"Addressing theological students, the Supreme Leader stressed that the world of Islam, in particular the Shiites along with the entire Iranian nation, will not tolerate the profanity committed by US military forces on Islam`s holy shrines in Iraqi cities. Denouncing the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces which have been exposed only recently, Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the US system as being an icon of hatred, oppression and indifference towards human dignity.



"Today, the US in Iraq and the occupying regime in Palestine are committing the most shameful acts in human history, the Supreme Leader stressed.

Iran can easily destabilize Iraq, and although this speech may be posturing, if it signals a policy shift it could be fateful.

Rumsfeld Plays "M", Gives License to Kill



Sy Hersh's expose of an ultra-secret 00 unit of two hundred inside the Pentagon is probably the nail in the coffin of Rumsfeld's tenure at the Department of Defense, and may well be a factor in the presidential elections.



Disturbingly, Sen. Joe Lieberman endorsed torture as an information extraction mechanism on Wolf Blitzer's show on Sunday. He gave the tired example of whether, if one of the 9/11 hijackers had fallen into US hands, one wouldn't have wanted all means used to extract information about the coming attack? Here's the transcript:

"And I want to go back to the first part. Let us acknowledge that we're in a war on terrorism. It's a different kind of war. If there was a special interrogation unit that really was focused on suspected terrorists, and, for instance, we had such a unit before September 11th, and it could have gotten information out of those terrorists or others working with them that would have allowed us to stop September 11th, I don't think there are many Americans who would say we shouldn't use whatever means are necessary to extract that information. That's one question. There's a long way from that to Abu Ghraib and the prisoners we've seen."

There are several things wrong with this stance. Although Lieberman was trying to distance himself from the Abu Ghuraib practices, he was slipping in a justification of torture under some circumstances. In fact, there is every evidence that "that" was not a long way from Abu Ghuraib at all, and it was precisely Lieberman's reasoning that led to it, starting at Gitmo and spreading. First, torture does not work, and there is no evidence that it worked at Abu Ghuraib. (It may work tactically on a limited basis, but it doesn't work strategically; it throws up bad information with the good and creates lots of enemies; if it worked Algeria would be French soil). Second, the argument that the ends justify the means always turns human beings into monsters. If something is morally wrong, you don't do it if you hope to remain a moral society. Society would be a lot safer if all known heads of identified criminal organizations were taken out by police snipers. We don't do that. Why? Sen. Lieberman should think about it. That way lies a descent into barbarity before which September 11 would pale.



Third (as a reader reminded me) there were no terrorist suspects at Abu Ghuraib, only persons suspected of knowing something about the insurgency or being involved in it (and apparently from what the Red Cross says, a lot of them were picked up in error anyway).



We Americans either stand for something or we don't. What I always assumed we stood for was the US Constitution. Our State Department annually rates other countries by how well their record stacks up against the US Bill of Rights. That custom seems an implicit admission that we hold these rights and values to be universal, not limited to US soil or only a privilege of citizens. And here is what the founding generation of Americans thought about Abu Ghuraib and torture:

Article 8:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

The Implication of Shiite Divisions



Scott Wilson of the Washington Post says that "A Divided South Moves to the Fore in Iraq."



The main point of the article is that the situation in Najaf is different from that in Fallujah because the Shiites are themselves divided, whereas in Fallujah the Sunnis were relatively united. Thus, the US could establish a Fallujah Brigade of ex-Baathist soldiers and that was acceptable to most Sunnis. In contrast, in Najaf, he says, the Shiites are so at odds with one another that a similar solution would not work.



Mr. Wilson's point is not untrue, but the analysis gives the wrong impression. The reason the disunity of the Shiites is important is not that it would prevent the formation of a "Najaf Brigade" that included elements of all the Shiite paramilitaries. It would not prevent this move, which would be the desirable one. (If Wilson is correct, Gen. Dempsey lost the bureaucratic battle he was waging in the army to have it adopted).



The reason the disunity matters is that it allows the US to be more successful in its siege of Najaf than it was in Fallujah. If the city of Najaf put up the kind of fight that Fallujah had put up across the board (with ex-Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists united), the US would have to back off and seek a compromise. Because Grand Ayatollah Sistani and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are actively colluding with the Americans to destroy Sadr and his militia, the US can hope to succeed by force, without having to do the hard work of making a political deal with the Sadrists.



Muqtada himself is largely responsible for his lack of significant Shiite allies, since he has deliberately alienated them all by bullying and threatening them. But Sistani and al-Hakim are unwise to allow themselves to be used this way by Bush, since their political standing with the Shiite public will certainly suffer greatly as a result. Nor is it wise for the US to blunt Sistani's moral authority in this manner. He had been the one man who could keep the Shiite south largely calm with a single fatwa. It is not clear that he will have that same clout after this episode, especially with the more nationalistic of the Iraqi Shiites, and as a result the south may well be much less stable going forward.

Heavy Fighting in Karbala, Amara, Nasiriyah, Samawah

5 Americans Dead; British Kill 20 Near Amara



The Shiite uprising of Muqtada al-Sadr continued Saturday, as it clashed with Coalition forces throughout the south of the country.



Guerrillas killed 3 US soldiers Friday night or Saturday, while two others died of non-combat-related causes.



al-Hayat and ash-Sharq al-Awsat: British troops killed 20 Iraqis on Saturday in battles with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr near Amara. British sources maintained that their forces had been ambushed by the Sadrists, including by roadside bombs.



Fierce battles also raged in Nasiriyah Friday night into Saturday between Italian troops and Mahdi Army forces after the latter bombarded the Coalition HQ in that city, in which 20 state employees and journalists had taken shelter.



BBC monitoring reports,

" Three hours of fighting overnight in Al-Nasiriyah: Italian soldiers clashed with members of the Al-Mahdi Army militia overnight in the centre of Al-Nasiriyah, AFP reported on 15th quoting an Italian military spokesman. The spokesman said the fighting lasted for three hours, but that no coalition forces were wounded . . . Italian troops returned fire against militiamen armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. However, a house was destroyed and several others were damaged along with some shops. Electricity officials said power had been cut in five districts of the city. (AFP 0719 gmt 15 May 04) "

In Karbala, clashes between Iraqi Civil Defense forces and Sadrists resulted in the deaths of 3 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 7 others. The battle broke out Saturday morning. Ali al-`Ardawi, the director of Karbala's Emergency Room, was the one who provided the casualty figures. Eyewitnesses said that American forces in the city destroyed the office of al-Sadr, where his fighters had been surrounded. Helicopter gunships fired missiles at Mahdi Army positions, and American snipers spread out on rooftops near the shrine of Imam Husain and his half-brother Abbas. Karbala police denied reports that the Sadrists had kicked them out of their police station or had captured weapons stores from them. US soldiers used megaphones to urge Karbala residents to evacuate from the downtown area, suggesting that they were on the verge of launching a new offensive. Mahdi Army leader Shaikh Hamza al-Ta'i held a news conference in which he released a member of the Karbala police force, who had been captured by Mahdi Army forces a couple of days ago. Al-Ta'i announced, "This is the last policeman we release. If we capture any police in future, we will execute him as a collaborator with the occupation."



An aide of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, on being asked about Sistani's position, said that the grand ayatollah had called on the people of Karbala "to mediate between the two sides to resolve the crisis in peaceful ways."



US military fire killed 3 Mahdi Army militiamen and (by accident) an Iraqi policeman in the east Baghdad slum, Sadr City.



BBC World Monitoring Reports from the Japanese Kyodo News site,

" Gunfire broke out late on 14th and early 15th in Samawah around an area where armed supporters of Shi'i cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr had gathered, and a separate explosion in the city killed at least one Iraqi security force member, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported quoting police and eye-witnesses. A spokesman for the British forces in Basra said some of the gunfire was aimed at Dutch troops in Samawah, where Japanese troops are also deployed. The explosion occurred around 12.55 am. on 15th ; an ambulance was later seen heading for the southeastern section of the city. Witnesses said the shooting lasted about 10 minutes around 11.30 pm. in the heart of Samawah near the building where 20 to 30 supporters of Al-Sadr gathered earlier in the afternoon. Another round of small-arms fire was heard near a police facility in the city around 2.45 am. Sporadic shooting including near a local police facility, followed until early on 15th . . . Many of the supporters were masked and armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, witnesses said. This was one of the most violent outbreak in Samawah since US President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May last year. (Kyodo 0223 gmt 15 May 04)

Ali al-Addad, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq," told al-Hayat that his organization's Badr Corps militia would fight alongside the Mahdi Army in a holy war if it were ordered to do so by the grand ayatollahs in Najaf. (I.e. he is saying that they would turn on the Americans in a New York minute if Sistani ordered them to). The office of Abu Bakr al-Sa`idi, supervisor of the Badr Corps, however, denied any intention to intervene on one side or the other.



A prominent official of the Badr Corps in Sadr City told al-Hayat that the leadership of the Corps had ordered all its troops in the city to avoid all sites associated with the Mahdi Army. He admitted that rumors were circulating that Badr Corps fighters were betraying to the Americans the hiding-places of Mahdi Army officials.



Udayy al-Asadi, a well-known Sadrist in Baghdad, said that the faction within SCIRI headed by Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji supported the American operation to curb or destroy the Army of the Mahdi "because some of them will greatly benefit if the Sadrist movement is extinguished."



Meanwhile, the Board of Muslim Clerics, a fundamentalist body with substantial authority for Sunni Arabs, announced "its support for Sadr, and called on the Shiites to unify their ranks." It strongly denounced American troops for conducting military operations in Najaf and Karbala. (Ali, whose tomb is in Najaf, is both the first Imam of the Shiites and the fourth Caliph of the Sunnis. It is sort of like the situation of St. Peter in Christianity, where he is given primacy by Catholicism but is secondary to Paul among many Protestants. Anyway, Sunnis are just as worried about the sanctity of Ali's tomb as Shiites are).



The Board's statement encouraged "our brethren in Najaf and Karbala to show solidarity among themselves, and to stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of those who desire evil for them." The Sunni clerics called on the Shiites to "beware of falling into the snare and to refuse to allow any internal faction fighting to flare up."



(When hardline Sunni clerics are dismayed that the Shiites are divided, you know things are bad. This would be like the Vatican upbraiding Ian Paisley for not working closely enough with other Protestants.)



Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Board of Muslim Clerics, said that he stood by any "free Iraqi who is confronting the forces of Occupation." He added, "National values that reject Occupation join us together with the leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and we deeply appreciate these values, with which he is adorned." He said that the Fallujah agreement, which ended the American siege of that Sunni Arab city, would not lead Sunnis to leave Muqtada al-Sadr to confront the Americans by himself. He said that the simultaneous nature of the attacks on Fallujah and on Muqtada al-Sadr had inspired a conviction that there was some sort of connection and coordination between the resistance in Fallujah and that in Najaf, but he denied any such formal cooperation.



Senior Iranian cleric Hosain Nuri Hamedani ' referred to the US forces operations as savage attacks on Muslim holy sites in the two Iraqi cities, and called them "painful and intolerable." '



Reuters reports that an umbrella group of Kuwaiti Shiites, the "Congregation of Muslim Shiite Ulama in Kuwait," which includes an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a statement condemning both the US and the Sadrists for fighting in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

"We strongly demand that these forces put out the fire of strife raging in holy Najaf and Karbala by pulling out from the two holy shrines. The Shi'ites of the world did not expect this hasty and wrong behavior from the coalition forces in Iraq by entering the holy sites."

About 15% of the Kuwaiti population is said to be Shiite, and the community there is intellectually and institutionally important for other Gulf countries and for Basra in particular in Iraq. It has a lot of wealthy merchants and some important Islamic institutes.