Wednesday, Apr 07, 2004
Forces loyal to radical Shia clergyman Moqtada al-Sadr captured Shia Islam's holiest shrine this week in the city of Najaf, ousting the followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's paramount Shia cleric.
According to curators, Sadr loyalists gathered at the gates with mortars on Wednesday and said "give us the keys or we'll blow the doors down", said a shoe attendant, who gave his first name as Ahmed. "So we gave them the keys."
Ahmed Shaybani, a first year theology student and Sadr lieutenant now in charge of the most venerated shrine of the Shia religion, gave a different version. "We came peacefully and in light of the extraordinary circumstances asked for the keys for safe keeping," he said.
As his forces fought see-saw battles with coalition troops throughout Iraq's south on Wednesday, Mr Sadr's home base of Najaf was oddly quiet, and he remained barricaded in his office near the shrine-tomb of Imam Ali, whose martyrdom in the 7th century was the founding event of the Shia faith. Aside from the mourners, the gold-domed shrine, only days earlier heaving with Iranian pilgrims, was left to the pigeons.
Mr Shaybani was sitting in the largest seat of a vacuous hall in the shrine complex, bordered on four sides by red-cushioned armchairs. A telephone perched on a glass table at side his delivered updates from the battlefield, which on Wednesday included virtually every major city in south and central Iraq.
According to the reports, the Mahdi Army had fired mortars at a Spanish base, destroyed five armoured cars in Najaf, seven in Basra, and 12 in Nasiriya. They had chased the Ukrainian forces out of Kut, a town 60 miles south of Baghdad.
On Wednesday Kalashnikov-toting militiamen raced round the shrine in police cars, looted in the previous four days of fighting. Others bearing badges of the radical cleric stood guard at the gates, searching the families bearing the coffins of "martyrs" killed in the fighting who had come to Najaf to perform the last rite of a perambulation round Imam Ali's marble tomb.
Nearby, guards manned barricades of metal bars in the alleyway leading to Mr Sistani's two-storey home, close to the shrine and around the corner from Mr Sadr's own office. The two clerics have a relationship that swings between prickly and downright hostile, with the elderly Mr Sistani viewing 30-year-old Mr Sadr as an upstart with more nerve than scholarly credentials.
"We offered Mr Sistani that the Mahdi's Army would protect him, but he said he would protect himself," said Mr Shaybani, sounding surprised at the lack of a response.
Mr Sistani on Wednesday condemned the way US-led occupation forces were tackling the Shia uprising and called for calm on all sides. "We condemn the way the occupying forces are dealing with current events, just as we condemn aggression against public and private property which leads to unrest and stops Iraqi officials from carrying out their duties," a statement issued by his office said.
A block away, Mr Sadr issued statements aimed at broadening the conflict beyond Iraq's borders. His latest fatwa, pinned to Najaf's arcades, called on Kuwait's leaders to close their borders to America's "satanic" forces.
The fatwa is likely to increase fears among the Arab Gulf's Sunni rulers that Iraq's Shia awakening could agitate their own Shia minorities.
Radio Baghdad reported that in the wake of his takeover of several of Iraq's southern towns, Mr Sadr was calling for the occupation administration to transfer power to Iraqi Shurafa, or notables.
Najaf's merchant class expressed disgust at the entrance into the holy city of Mr Sadr's troops, most of whom come from the slums of Baghdad. "We're fed up with Moqtada. It's because of him that the schools and government offices have been closed for days," said Ahmed al-Rashidi of the Medina electronics store.
Other fatwas pinned to the walls included one from Mr Sadr's spiritual mentor, Kazem al-Haeri, who is based in Iran. "We knew all along that the occupation forces had come not to liberate but fight Muslims, arrest their clerics, and kill their children," it read.
Mr Sistani's fatwas were nowhere to be seen. Disciples of another influential Ayatollah, Sheikh Yaqoubi, who in the past has allied himself with the Mahdi's Army, echoed Mr Sadr's demands for the expulsion of Anglo-American forces from Iraq, and blamed occupation troops for the scores of Iraqis killed in clashes.
But they said Iraq's mainstream clerics remained united in opposing violence.
Nicolas Pelham in Najaf
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