BAGHDAD — Men dressed as Iraqi police com­man­dos slipped into Samarra’s shrine of “Imam Hasan al-Askari”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_al_Askari last night, set explo­sive and “blew it up”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060222/ts_nm/iraq_dc this morn­ing, caus­ing the golden dome to col­lapse and with it, hopes for a national unity gov­ern­ment.
(How impor­tant is the Al-Askari shrine? It’s one of the holi­est shrines for Shi’a Mus­lims because Hasan al-Askari is the father of the 12^th Imam, or the Mahdi, a messiah-like fig­ure for Mus­lims world-wide. The father’s remains are buried in the Shrine.)
Vio­lent protests are now sweep­ing Iraq. Peo­ple from the pre­dom­i­nantly Shi’ite Shu’lah neigh­bor­hood in west­ern Bagh­dad have attacked Sunni mosques in Ghaz­a­liya, a nearby Sunni area. Sadr City, home base for rebel cleric — and par­lia­men­tary power­bro­ker — Moq­tada al-Sadr, has report­edly re-armed. A Shi’ite mob also report­edly killed a man in the street they said was a Salafist or Wahabbi.
In Bas­rah, there are reports of heavy street fight­ing between Sunni and Shi’ite gun­men, and Sunni polit­i­cal party offices have been attacked. There are reports of attacks on a British and Dan­ish base in Basra, but no reports of casu­al­ties yet.
This all hap­pened when I was in the Green Zone today to inter­view Lt. Gen. Dempsey, com­man­der of the “train­ing command”:http://www.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil/. He can­celled his inter­view, which baf­fled his poor pub­lic affairs office. He com­mented that what was hap­pen­ing must be really big if Dempsey is can­cel­ing inter­views as he’s usu­ally not involved in the day-to-day war fight­ing details. (“He’s not in the 5-meter knife fight,” the PAO said.) Also, I saw sev­eral Apache heli­copters tak­ing off from the Green Zone, which is also unusual. Usu­ally, it’s Black­hawks that fill the air. Other mil­i­tary source sources have said the Amer­i­cans have scaled back all patrols, espe­cially in Shi’ite neigh­bor­hoods.
If this doesn’t spark a much-feared civil war, we’ll be lucky. This is the tens­est Bagh­dad has been in two years, and this attack is espe­cially provoca­tive com­ing as it does dur­ing “Arba’een”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arba%27een, the 40-day mourn­ing period for “Imam Hussayn”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husayn_bin_Ali that fol­lows the Shi’ite com­mem­o­ra­tion of “Ashura”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura.
Of course, Sis­tani might still ride in and save the day — again. We can hope.
But quite apart from all that, this will derail Washington’s hopes for an inclu­sive Iraqi gov­ern­ment that includes Sun­nis in mean­ing­ful posi­tions. The Shi’ite alliance in par­lia­ment is already push­ing back against state­ments made by Amb. Zal­may Khalilzad on Mon­day, in which he said the secu­rity min­istries (Inte­rior and Defense) should go to “peo­ple who are non-sectarian … who do not rep­re­sent or have ties to mili­tias.” (Yeah, he’s talk­ing to you, Badr Corps.) Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Ibrahim al-Jaafari fired back and said, in effect, “bug­ger off.”:http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21022006/325/iraq-s-jaafari-rejects-u-s-sectarian-warning.html
“When some­one asks us whether we want a sec­tar­ian gov­ern­ment the answer is ‘No, we do not want a sec­tar­ian government’ — not because the U.S. ambas­sador says so or issues a warn­ing,” he told a news con­fer­ence. “We think that sov­er­eignty means no one inter­feres in our affairs.“
Memo to Prime Min­is­ter: That ship has sailed, _habibi._ I guess inter­fer­ence in inter­nal Iraqi affairs is only OK when you’re the one being installed in power after rid­ing in on the back of an Amer­i­can tank.
Snark aside, today’s attack will mean it will be much, much harder to make the case for includ­ing Sun­nis in the gov­ern­ment, espe­cially if it means giv­ing up any of the impor­tant min­istries. (Maybe the Sun­nis would like the Youth and Sports min­istry? The Olympics are com­ing up in a cou­ple of years.) And even if the Shi’ite coali­tion wanted to include Sun­nis, today’s attack on the shrine will make it very hard to keep their con­stituen­cies loyal if they’re seen as reward­ing “ter­ror­ists,” which many Shi’a now call all Sun­nis.
Also sig­nif­i­cant is that Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shi’ite in Iraq, called for seven days of mourn­ing and protests — although he urged them to remain peace­ful. I can’t help but won­der, “Is he seri­ous?” This is an emo­tional, volatile time and any protests are likely to turn vio­lent, either from their own accord or through _agent provocateurs_ who might use them as kin­dling for more fire­works.
Out­side now I can hear chant­ing and the occa­sional gun shot. There have been two deep _whumps_ nearby, the sig­na­ture of car bombs. I can hear jets over Bagh­dad. The sit­u­a­tion is tense and every­one is on high alert.
*UPDATES 8:43:35 PM +0300 GMT:* Out­raged demon­stra­tors have burned the Sunni Waqf office in Basra. (The Waqf is the Sunni Endow­ment Board, and is basi­cally a trust set up to take care of Sunni reli­gious prop­er­ties. It’s funded by the gov­ern­ment and has an appointed head. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the largest Sunni coali­tion in par­lia­ment was once head of Iraq’s Sunni Waqf board.)
Large demon­stra­tions are sched­uled for tomor­row at 10 a.m. Yikes.
Moq­tada al-Sadr is hold­ing _takfiris_ (those who call oth­ers infi­dels, i.e., the Salafists and Wahabists), Ba’athists and the “occu­pa­tion” respon­si­ble for the shrine attack. “It was not the Sun­nis who attacked the shrine of imam Al-Hadi, God’s peace be upon him, but rather the occu­pa­tion; the _takfiris_, al-nawasib (a deroga­tory term the Shi­ites use to refer to Sun­nis), God damn them; and the Ba’thists. We should not attack Sunni mosques. I ordered al-Mahdi Army to pro­tect the Shi’ite and Sunni shrines and to show a high sense of respon­si­bil­ity, some­thing they actu­ally did.” Moq­tada has also called for a vote in par­lia­ment on expelling “for­eign forces,” the ras­cal.
Al-Sistani has con­demned the attack on the Askari shrine, but also said — some­what omi­nously — “The Iraqi Gov­ern­ment is expected, now more than any time before, to fully shoul­der its respon­si­bil­i­ties and halt the wave of crim­i­nal acts that tar­get the holy places. If the government’s secu­rity organs are not capa­ble of pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary pro­tec­tion, the believ­ers are capa­ble of doing so with Almighty God’s assis­tance.” (empha­sis added.) That’s really not good.