Trouble in Najaf

Last night I was chat­ting with an Iraqi friend from Bagh­dad, and he told me the Amer­i­cans would be ill-advised to enter the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, but that they would any­way, caus­ing a mas­sive dis­as­ter. “I don’t think so,” I said cau­tiously as we sat on my stoop. “I don’t think the Amer­i­cans would be that fool­ish.”
Well, maybe I was wrong. At least one coali­tion sol­dier was killed in a skir­mish either just inside or on the out­skirts of the city. Some out­lets say the fight­ing is more wide­spread than the Times reports. Nego­ti­a­tions with rebel Shi’a cleric Muq­tada al-Sadr have appar­ently bro­ken down.
Juan Cole notes that Muq­tada, in his Fri­day ser­mon, said, “We shall never per­mit these forces to enter this city of Najaf or the holy sites, for they are for­bid­den to them.” Kevin Drum notes that Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani is sup­port­ing al-Sadr and Ahmed Cha­l­abi is sup­port­ing Sistani.

[T]he pow­er­ful spir­i­tual leader of all Iraq’s Shi­ites, Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani, has told them that he has “drawn a red line” around Najaf. It’s a clas­sic Iraqi power-play. Al-Sistani has brought Sheikh Sadr to heel so now he will pro­tect him against an Amer­i­can threat to cap­ture or kill the imam who is wanted on mur­der charges.

But Najaf may not be the biggest prob­lem. The Israelis assas­si­nated the new Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a mis­sile strike today. The reac­tions from the Pales­tini­ans? “It was Bush.” With the death of al-Rantissi churn­ing the Arab world (thanks, Ariel! You just keep mak­ing Amer­i­cans’ jobs harder in Iraq and in the wider Arab world) and Amer­i­cans mass­ing on the out­skirts of the Shi’ism’s two holi­est cities — Kar­bala and Najaf — the United States is look­ing at the mak­ings of a per­fect storm.
Secu­rity in Iraq is mostly a a fic­tion. The United States is fight­ing for con­trol of major sup­ply lines into Bagh­dad. Sixty per­cent of Iraq’s Mus­lims are becom­ing increas­ingly restive and more likely to work with Sunni fight­ers. Whether the charges are true or not, sto­ries of bru­tal­i­ties against the res­i­dents of Fal­lu­jah by U.S. Marines are dis­tress­ing the Arab world and fuel­ing anti-Western sen­ti­ment. In short, the twin occu­pa­tions of the Mid­dle East — the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries and Iraq — are becom­ing part of the same war in the minds of Mus­lims every­where.
Is that the war Amer­i­can and Israel wants?

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