I’m try­ing to orga­nize a trip to Najaf tomor­row, and hope­fully to get into the shrine. A cou­ple of friends of mine did it last week, but left after three days inside. They reported no weapons in the shrine proper, but instead they were stored around the shrine in the nearby build­ings. How­ever, other orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the AP, have pub­lished pic­tures of Mahdi fight­ers man­ning machine guns that the cut­line said was _in the shrine._ Also, an Iraqi reporter who helps TIME out has reported that peo­ple in Najaf are sick of the Mahdi fir­ing mor­tars from either within the shrine com­pound or from its minarets. So, I don’t know what to make of that.
And let’s not even get into the whole con­fu­sion of Moq­tada al-Sadr’s “will he or won’t he?” crab­walk on whether he’s vacat­ing the shrine or not. There have been so many con­flict­ing reports that I can’t begin to make sense of the state of play. Suf­fice it to say, con­fu­sion reigns at this point.
Thus, the expe­di­tion to Najaf. I’ll be tak­ing a BGan satel­lite receiver and my lap­top, so I should be able to file, if needed. But I may not be able to get into the shrine or even to Najaf; we’ve got to go through Kufa, where there have been reports of rel­a­tively heavy fight­ing.
So hope­fully we’ll be able to see a lit­tle bit of what’s going on. Wish me luck.