Iran Blames Bush
Sunni Shiite Clashes
Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor has an excellent piece interpreting the significance of the turmoil over the bombing of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra.
Shiites came out in the thousands all over the Shiite south on Wednesday to protest. Quoting Sunni Arab spokesmen, the wire services are saying 75 Sunni mosques have been attacked, with two burned to the ground and 3 Sunni clergymen assassinated, with 6 Sunni Arabs dead altoghether in the violence.
In the southern city of Kut, AP says, 3,000 protesters came out to rally against the United States and Israel.
AFP says that 10,000 people in East Baghdad converged on the office of Muqtada al-Sadr, chanting against "Wahhabis" and America.
AP also describes some of the other violence:
' Large protests erupted in Shiite parts of Baghdad and in cities throughout the Shiite heartland to the south. In Basra, Shiite militants traded rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire with guards at the office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Smoke billowed from the building.
Shiite protesters later set fire to a Sunni shrine containing the seventh century tomb of Talha bin Obeid-Allah, companion of the Prophet Muhammad, on the outskirts of the southern city. Police found 11 bodies of Sunni Muslims, most of them shot in the head, in two neighborhoods of Basra, police Capt. Mushtaq Kadhim said. Two of the dead were Egyptians, Kadhim said.
Protesters in Najaf, Kut and Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City also marched through the streets by the hundreds and thousands, many shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans and burning those nations' flags. '
The hardline Shiite Mahdi Army has come out of Sadr City and is all over Baghdad. They are clashing with Sunnis in Basra.
Sunni leader Tariq al- Hashimi threatened reprisals for reprisal killings.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim blamed the US for holding back the Badr Corps.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani called for nonviolent street protests that he must know won't be nonviolent.
Iran is blaming Bush and the Israelis, which is ridiculous but already widely believed in Iraq and Iran.
The threat of terrorism and attacks on Americans just went way up.
---
Postscript:
A reader writes in:
' An hour ago [my Iraqi Shiite fried] recieved a call from Najaf. You know the Najaf boys are losing their heads over what happened.
No wonder. 80 years or so ago their relatives bought some land up there [at Samarra] and established Shia communities around the mosque and in Samarra. So the boys had been working there living there from time to time and some really settled down for good. A month or two ago lots of Shia were expelled, thrown out of town or scared off.
And now this.
They told B. how the demolition was carried out. You see, it was nothing like
a hipshot sneaking up bombing by night. It was meticulous, skilful piece of work,
taking a lot of time, the guards knowing all about what was going on. At least that´s what they told him today.
So now they all gather downtown Nejef rallying, preparing a gruesome revenge.
Sistani tries hard to stop them, they told him, but the boys won´t listen. They´re heading for Samarra. '
[Revised].
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/22/2006 10:38:00 AM
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15 Comments:
Thanks for your coverage, as always.
Sistani is saying so much more though, if the Los Angeles Times report is accurate:
"The Iraqi government now is supported more than ever, and if its security apparatuses are not able to offer the required security, then the faithful must be able to do it, with the help of God," according to a statement released by Sistani's office in Najaf.
Sadr and Hakim are both irate -- no doubt because it is beneficial to their causes.
Professor, would you say that this is the largest attack (in psychological effect) of the entire war?
I think it is worthwhile at this point to examine this attack on the shrine uin Samarra with an eye of who derives the benefit from this action...
Given that the shrine is attached to Imam Mahdi, the provocation is clearly aimed at all Shiites, but specifically aimed at the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi militia.
Samarra is a city rife with problems of insurgency... Logic would indicate that the insurgents would want the Shiite militia, especially al-Sadr's followers, on their side fighting the Americans and NOT the other way around...
But radicals from Salafi/Wahhabi groups, such as Al Qaeda, believe all shrines as blasphemous sites of idolatory and grave worship... They reject the idea of Imam Mahdi, and would be well within their puritanical agenda in attacking Shiite mosques and shrines - especially as a retaliation to Shiite death squads...
The third option is that of foreign agents - Who derives great benefit from pitting Shiite militias versus the Sunni insurgency and therefore weakening a possible Shiite-dominated Iraqi government? That question, and the issue of false flag operations, must be investigated - though our in-bed scribblers probably will NOT go down that route.
So the $64,000 question is who actually did the bombing. This was an incredibly calculated move to inflame tensions, and I doubt whoever did this didn't realize what would happen.
Al Quaeda in Iraq perhaps?
Mississippi Goddamn
but the insurgency is in its last death throes! honest!
I think past statements are coming back to hunt the occupation.
I agree and disagree with your statement:
Iran is blaming Bush and the Israelis, which is ridiculous but already widely believed in Iraq and Iran.
I don't think US/Israelis were directly involved. But I doubt if Iranians are making that claims either, as you said that would be ridiculous. I believe they are blaming US policies and its not-so-hidden agenda and plans for Iraq as the root cause of this.
Also, if you remember in the Lebanon's Hariri case, the US/ Britain claim was that given the Syrian army presence in Iraq, it was impossible for them not to know about attempted murder of Hariri. The "impossible for them not to know" was part of the public evidence that was used to blamed Syria for the murder of Hariri. I don't know if Syria was involved in it or not. But the public argument was that Syria has 15k troops in Lebanon and they are in charge of the security of Lebanon.
In this case US and Britain have many times that in Iraq. Also Samarra has been supposedly taken back from insurgency! I would expect that there are more US troops in and around Samarra than the whole of Syrian army in Lebanon
Here was a news item that covered this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2053168,00.html
Would US/Britain now ask for independent inquiry into this? None of the previous atrocities were investigated by any independent body. If you remember the bomb that killed Hakim's brother in Karbala was a Huge bomb, outside Imam Ali Mosque. No one investigated it.
This ain't no insurgency. This is civil war.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
AJ reports rising fears of civil war, 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.
Iraq shrine bombing sparks reprisals
Sorry Juan,
I posted the wrong URL for the article that I found on life in Samarra.
This might be of interest to your reader:
Sides blur for U.S. troops trying to secure Samarra
Prof:
Do you still believe that one state is possible, that 3 states would cause a greater conflagration than this?
I agree with daryoush, Bush is indirectly responsible for this bombing because it was his policy to invade and destabilize Iraq that unleashed these forces. Colin Powell was right to tell Bush that this is a country of 20 million people and you break it you own it.
Prof. Cole: The letter from a reader at the end of your post requires some explication and comment from you. It paints the bombing as an inside job. Do you have any light to shed on the credibilityof your reader? What other evidence exists for such a claim?
Simply throwing it out there with no comment or evaluation is irresponsible.
But then, accountability and responsibility are not your hallmarks.
You supported this invasion to begin with, on behalf of oppressed Shiites and Kurds, claiming after the invasion that "no one seriously believed the weapons rationale."
You have consistently opposed the withdrawal of U.S. troops, because "there would be a civil war."
There has been a civil war underway for at least a year, with U.S. troops on the Shia side, against Sunnis. (And in the north, on the Kurdish side against Iraqi Arabs.)Naturally enough, turning a blind eye as death squads and militias operate inside and outside Iraqi police and security forces, and conducting brutal counterinsurgency with constant bombing from the air has not been effective in stopping the escalating civil war. Now the destruction of the Golden Mosque puts events truly beyond U.S. control.
Wiki takes excellent care of current developments on the Golden Mosque. Here it goes, direct accusation of US and Israel by Ahmadinejad.
1. Iran: U.S., Israel Destroyed Iraqi Shrine
2. Al Askari Mosque
Unlike Nell, I think Professor Cole is perfectly responsible in posting a comment by someone who believes he has relevant information.
I think this question of who did the bombing is very interesting. The Hindustani Times article in the Wikipedia article linked by InPlainView says,
Sources have said that four men wearing a military uniform and three men in black, entered the mosque early Wednesday and detonated two bombs, one of which collapsed the dome and damaged a large part of the northern wall of the shrine.
The London Times indicates that the military uniforms were of the Iraq Special Forces and that the assailants "overpowered" the guards. This is unlikely to have occurred without gunplay, unless the guards believed the men were to be trusted.
The photos linked by InPlainView make it seem as if this was a professional job. Damage to the dome is symmetrical. Relatively little rubble is in the streets.
I think we should consider the possibility this was arranged by the Bush Administration. Civil war between Shiites and Sunni does keep the focus off the occupation forces.
There are plenty of other suspects, of course. But I find it difficult to believe that Iran or any other Shiite group would commit an act of this gravity. And despite all the huffing and puffing, there aren't many Al Qaida in Iraq.
Of all the perhaps 2000 foreign fighters, how many of them are demolition experts?
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