Bloodbath a bad omen for coalition forces

The Star (S.Africa)

http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=393104

To the horror of the occupying powers in Iraq, the
country’s ever more bloody insurgency has at last
spilled over into the majority Shi’ite Muslim
community.

Coalition soldiers fought gunmen in the holy city of
Najaf yesterday with the loss of at least 20 lives.

The shooting started after protesters gathered at the
Spanish base on the outskirts of the city following the
arrest of an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shi’ite
cleric whose "Army of Mehdi" has never before fired its
guns.

That the latest bloodbath should have occurred in Najaf
– one of the holiest places in Islam - was as dangerous
as it was painfully symbolic. Even as bullets skittered
past them, protesters held up pictures of the imams Ali
and Hussein, whose epic martyrdom is mourned in every
Shi’ite home.

That it should be Spanish troops who were engaged in
the battle, only weeks from being withdrawn from Iraq
by the new Spanish socialist government, was a final
irony.

More than 200 people were also wounded during the
three- hour gunbattle. At Najaf’s main hospital, many
of the dead were wearing the black uniform of al-Sadr’s
army, but two Iraqi police officers, one American and a
soldier from El Salvador were also among the dead.

Each side claimed the other had started the shooting.

Al-Sadr himself called for an end to the fighting, his
spokesperson Abdulhadi al-Daraji claiming that the
"arrogant powers say thank you for your peaceful
protests and then fire on the demonstrators".

The demonstrations had their roots in the decision of
the US administrator, Paul Bremer, to close al-Sadr’s
small- circulation weekly newspaper, al-Hawza, in
Baghdad a week ago for "inciting violence against
coalition forces".

It now seems that his decision to shut down the paper
has incited violence on a far greater scale than Bremer
could have imagined.

Yet he managed to say all the wrong things again
yesterday. "This morning, a group of people in Najaf
have crossed the line and they have moved to violence,"
he announced. "This will not be tolerated by the Iraqi
people and by the Iraqi security forces."

The trouble is that Bremer has said all this before -
but about Sunni insurgents - and his warnings almost
always increase the anger of his antagonists and bring
no end to violence.

Al-Sadr, of course, has his own reasons to find
political satisfaction in this bloodshed.

In the shadow of his infinitely more learned - and
judicious - clerical superior, Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
Al-Sadr has for months attempted to present himself as
the putative leader of the Shi’ite community.

The Anglo-American occupying powers have long suspected
that al-Sadr wanted just such a confrontation to rally
support for his minority movement, although why they
should have arrested Mustafa Yacoubi, al-Sadr’s aide,
remains a mystery.

Bremer, it seems, has now helped to bring that
confrontation about. A newspaper that was ignored by
millions of Iraqis, but whose sarcastic criticism of
Bremer is said to have personally annoyed him, might
henceforth be known as the paper which started a
Shi’ite insurrection.

Al-Sadr might be gambling that the other Shi’ite
militias will fall into step with his own armed men. If
this happens and the insurgency spreads to other
Shi’ite cities, then the entire occupation of Iraq
could become untenable.

The Americans can scarcely contain the Sunni Muslim
revolt to the north; they cannot fight another
community, this one representing 60% of Iraqis, even if
British troops who control the largely Shi’ite city of
Basra become involved.

The Spanish base in Najaf is located in the campus of
Kufa University, a broad expanse of land close to the
Euphrates River and defended by troops from El
Salvador.

The Spanish - their total force contains 1 300 men and
women, but only a few hundred are stationed in Najaf -
are due to leave on June 30, but they were anyway never
part of the occupying power. Many of the soldiers in
Najaf are involved in irrigation and agricultural
projects.

When bombs killed almost 200 people in Madrid last
month, Shi’ite clerics visited the Spanish troops in
Najaf to express their condolences. That is unlikely to
happen again.

More Shi’ite protests occurred in the centre of Baghdad
where American-paid Iraqi police fired rifles into the
air. The crowd carried a coffin, draped with an Iraqi
flag, which they said contained the body of a
demonstrator killed in the city on Saturday.

In Anbar province, two more US soldiers were killed
close to the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, where four
American mercenaries were murdered last week. -
Independent Foreign Service