Informed Comment
In Tikrit, according to al-Zaman, 3000 Sunni Arab demonstrators rallied Sunday in front of the Governor's mansion to vow revenge on the (Shiite) Badr Corps, and threatening to cut off water and electricity to Baghdad, in response to the arrest by the Ministry of the Interior of Col. Muzhir Taha al-Ghannam, the provincial chief of police. The head of Interior (similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) is Bayan Jabr, a long-time political representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), for which the Badr Corps functions as a private party militia. The deputy governor of Salahuddin, Abdullah Husain Jabbarah, said that al-Ghannam had been detained because of his background in working for the old Baath military as an intelligence officer concerned with combatting Iranian influence in Iraq. (Since SCIRI was the main agent of Iranian influence in Baathist Iraq, the Interior Minister presumably has an old grudge with Ghannam). The demonstrators charged that the Badr Corps was now purging from the Iraqi army all officers who fought bravely against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. During that war, SCIRI was based in Tehran and the Badr Corps carried out what many Iraqis considered terrorist attacks against Iraq. That it did so from enemy territory is still held against it by many. (It would be sort of as though the Christian Coalition had planned and carried out bombings of abortion clinics from Hanoi in the early 1970s).
More and more Sunnis are being radicalized by what they see as a purge of the Army by the Shia. The Army is the largest employer in Iraq, and one of the few places Sunnis can find work. Now the arrest of a Baathist leader charged with monitoring the Iranian influence in Iraq, tells a story of old tensions from the Iraqi-Iranian war feeding the new tensions. I suspect in fact, Iranian attempts to meddle in south Iraq were one of the major considerations of Saddam's invasion of Iran sparking the war.
Guardian Unlimited
A senior Shiite politician, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, appealed for calm, telling the 2,000-strong crowd that Sunnis and Shiites must live in peace together. Yet he had sent a very different message just two days before, suggesting Shiites set up vigilante groups to track down ``terrorists'' in the Sunni-led insurgency and report them to security authorities, which are dominated by Shiites.
Tensions between Shiite Arabs and the Sunni minority are rapidly worsening, pushing Iraq closer to a civil war that could disrupt its young democracy and lead to its breakup.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime more than two years ago, tensions have flared several times. But each time, historical ties binding the two groups and appeals for calm from religious leaders have averted conflict. In the face of spiraling violence, however, anti-Sunni sentiments among Shiite leaders are being articulated publicly, with impunity and tacit approval from powerful political circles.
[...]
Shiite-Sunni tensions were most palpable at the June 26 ceremony marking the bombing deaths in Karradah and Shula. It was held at the offices of Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Many in the 2,000-strong crowd cheered the Badr Brigade - a Shiite militia associated with al-Hakim's party and which many Sunnis accuse of targeting their community. Most of their ire was directed at sheik Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group known to have ties to the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
[...]
[In the south] ...a growing desire in the oil-rich, mainly Shiite south of Iraq for autonomy modeled on Iraqi Kurdistan. There, 14 years of self-rule have reduced Baghdad's authority to virtually nothing. Replicated in the south, it could spell the breakup of Iraq, a country that has existed in its present shape for less than a century.
Mob actions in the streets is the one thing every leader has to attend to, political or religious. The people are letting the leaders know they are gaining the inclination to act even against their own leaders.
New York Times
In the shifting landscape of the new Iraq, Ur, with a population more than 80 percent Shiite, is a troubling example of how lethal the sectarian divide can become. Since late March, at least 12 religious Sunnis, most of them worshipers at Ur mosques, have been killed, according to relatives of the dead and to Sheik Ahmed al-Ani, an imam from Ur who is tracking the deaths. Tallied together with an adjoining neighborhood - Shaab - the death toll is 26.
It is a quiet kind of killing, beneath the radar of car bombs and other headline-grabbing violence. But block by block, battle lines are being drawn, with religious Sunnis and Shiites lining up on opposite sides.
In the past, Ur, made up of tidy, treeless blocks, was, like most other Baghdad neighborhoods, the domain of Sunnis. Shiites endured decades of repression and killing under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, and were treated as second-class citizens. Now, with an Iraqi insurgency driven mostly by the fringes of the Sunni Arab community, Shiites bear the brunt of the attacks. Insurgents have driven car bombs into Shiite mosques and restaurants.
But attacks are carried out quietly against Sunnis as well, particularly in mixed neighborhoods, like Ur. Since March, some 56 families, according to Sheik Ani's count, have moved from Ur to areas where Sunnis predominate.
I would bet this story of Ur is being repeated many times over all over central Iraq. There is evidence of Kurds cleansing Kirkuk, even duping American troops into helping them. You can bet there is plenty of ethnic cleansing going on in the hottest parts of the Sunni Triangle where Sunnis are looking for Shia spies under every rock.
Complete Articles
Shiite-Sunni Tension Rises Anew in Iraq
Quiet Killings Split Neighborhood Where Sunnis and Shiites Once Lived Side by Side
Shiite-Sunni Tension Rises Anew in Iraq
Sunday July 3, 2005 6:46 PM
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Shiite mourners were crying for blood, threatening to burn down a Sunni town where dozens of Shiite travelers had been slain. Their rage boiled over after a fresh spate of bombings killed nearly 40 people in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad.
A senior Shiite politician, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, appealed for calm, telling the 2,000-strong crowd that Sunnis and Shiites must live in peace together. Yet he had sent a very different message just two days before, suggesting Shiites set up vigilante groups to track down ``terrorists'' in the Sunni-led insurgency and report them to security authorities, which are dominated by Shiites.
Tensions between Shiite Arabs and the Sunni minority are rapidly worsening, pushing Iraq closer to a civil war that could disrupt its young democracy and lead to its breakup.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime more than two years ago, tensions have flared several times. But each time, historical ties binding the two groups and appeals for calm from religious leaders have averted conflict.
In the face of spiraling violence, however, anti-Sunni sentiments among Shiite leaders are being articulated publicly, with impunity and tacit approval from powerful political circles.
On Tuesday, a Shiite lawmaker joined al-Hakim's call for vigilante groups, finding so much support in parliament that some fellow Shiites forfeited their turn to speak so he could finish.
``The rage of our young people is putting pressure on us,'' said Khidir al-Khozai, who warned Sunni Arab political parties not to remain silent over the Baghdad bombings.
The bombings last week in the Shula and Karradah districts, and the killing Tuesday of a Shiite legislator in his 80s, have pushed anti-Sunni sentiments to levels never seen since Saddam's ouster. Beside making the rounds of parliament, the issue also had been discussed in the home of Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
``There is a terrifying amount of sectarian tension in Iraq these days,'' warned Adnan al-Janabi, a senior Sunni Arab legislator and a moderate.
Mohammed Abdul-Hassan al-Shammari, a 37-year-old tennis pro, was among the victims of the Karradah bombings. Mithaq Salem, his Sunni colleague and friend of 13 years, was with al-Shammari's family for four consecutive days to help with the funeral, sitting with family and friends under an outdoor tent drinking bitter coffee and listening to Quranic verses.
``Everyone was cursing the Sunnis and praying to God that He takes revenge on them,'' Salem recalled. ``But what can I do? Not all of us are terrorists. Mohammed and his brother Fayez taught me everything I know. We are like brothers. This Shiite-Sunni thing never came up.''
In Shula, storekeepers have taken matters into their hands, prohibiting parking in parts of the neighborhood by placing tires, metal containers and palm tree trunks alongside sidewalks.
There's virtually nothing in looks or speech to distinguish between ordinary Sunnis and Shiites, yet Salem Lazem Hussein, who runs an electrical supplies store by the site of one of last week's car bombs, said: ``We have become so alert now that we can tell who is an outsider right away.''
``I close the store when I hear the call to sunset prayers. You cannot see your enemy in the dark, so I stay home,'' said the 37-year-old father of six.
Shiite-Sunni tensions were most palpable at the June 26 ceremony marking the bombing deaths in Karradah and Shula. It was held at the offices of Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Many in the 2,000-strong crowd cheered the Badr Brigade - a Shiite militia associated with al-Hakim's party and which many Sunnis accuse of targeting their community.
Most of their ire was directed at sheik Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group known to have ties to the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
``Al-Sistani is the sword of the Shiites, if he gives the order we will burn down Latifiyah,'' they chanted, alluding to the Sunni town south of Baghdad notorious for killings of Shiites.
The mood of the crowd appeared to reflect the angry tone of al-Hakim's June 24 statement in which he called on Shiites to set up ``popular committees'' in their neighborhoods to ``uncover terrorist cells'' and report them to security forces - most of which are Shiite-dominated.
The call for vigilante groups appeared to suggest a system very similar to what was used by Saddam's Baath party and security agencies to ferret out critics of the regime.
In a statement Saturday, al-Hakim warned against sectarian strife and called on the Iraqi government to step up efforts to fight with militants.
``We stress the importance of being alert and cautious not to be carried away toward the sectarian strife that our enemies want for us,'' he said. ``We ask the Iraqi government, particularly the security apparatuses, to exert more efforts to strike these terrorist groups.''
Shiite tribal sheiks, meanwhile, have been begging al-Sistani to issue a fatwa, or edict, permitting them to go after Sunnis who kill their fellow Shiites, according to Iraqis familiar with the meetings held at the cleric's home in the holy city of Najaf.
Al-Sistani, whose word is law for many Shiites, has refused to grant such permission, but has signaled his concern about the rising tensions.
He told Shiite and Sunni politicians who met him Monday at the holy city of Najaf that it was ``unacceptable'' from a religious viewpoint for Muslims to kill each other.
Over the past century, Iraq's Sunni Arab minority dominated the country - pushing the Shiites and Kurds to the sidelines. That ascendancy ended with the ouster of Saddam, their last patron. The domination by Sunnis of the two-year insurgency, and the rise to power of a Shiite-Kurdish alliance after elections in January, have deepened the rift.
Sunni Arabs account for up to 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people. Their inclusion in the political process - drafting a constitution, putting it to a vote in October and holding a general election two months later - is essential for its credibility and success.
If Sunni-Shiite tensions burst into conflict, the process will be derailed, throwing the country's political future into doubt and possibly causing the breakup of Iraq.
Already, the process is troubled over problems of a sectarian nature - Shiite opposition to come of the Sunnis on the committee drafting Iraq's constitution, and a growing desire in the oil-rich, mainly Shiite south of Iraq for autonomy modeled on Iraqi Kurdistan.
There, 14 years of self-rule have reduced Baghdad's authority to virtually nothing. Replicated in the south, it could spell the breakup of Iraq, a country that has existed in its present shape for less than a century.
For some, the marble plaza outside the Shiite Kazimiya shrine in northern Baghdad offered some respite from the mounting pressures. Here, large families of robed women, children and men picnicked on rice, lamb and vegetables as worshippers prepared for the sunset prayers.
``Peace and tranquility are found here,'' said Abu Bilal al-Basri, a silver-bearded man who came with a friend to pray. ``For us, it's the only safe place in Baghdad.''
---
Associated Press reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this story from Baghdad.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Quiet Killings Split Neighborhood Where Sunnis and Shiites Once Lived Side by Side
July 4, 2005
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
The New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 30 - The night before he was shot to death outside a mosque last month, Qasim Azawi talked with his wife about leaving the neighborhood. Two fellow Sunni worshipers had been killed in previous weeks, and he was afraid.
Less than 10 hours later, he was dead, the ninth Sunni to be killed since March in Ur, a neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.
In the shifting landscape of the new Iraq, Ur, with a population more than 80 percent Shiite, is a troubling example of how lethal the sectarian divide can become. Since late March, at least 12 religious Sunnis, most of them worshipers at Ur mosques, have been killed, according to relatives of the dead and to Sheik Ahmed al-Ani, an imam from Ur who is tracking the deaths. Tallied together with an adjoining neighborhood - Shaab - the death toll is 26.
It is a quiet kind of killing, beneath the radar of car bombs and other headline-grabbing violence. But block by block, battle lines are being drawn, with religious Sunnis and Shiites lining up on opposite sides.
In the past, Ur, made up of tidy, treeless blocks, was, like most other Baghdad neighborhoods, the domain of Sunnis. Shiites endured decades of repression and killing under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, and were treated as second-class citizens. Now, with an Iraqi insurgency driven mostly by the fringes of the Sunni Arab community, Shiites bear the brunt of the attacks. Insurgents have driven car bombs into Shiite mosques and restaurants.
But attacks are carried out quietly against Sunnis as well, particularly in mixed neighborhoods, like Ur. Since March, some 56 families, according to Sheik Ani's count, have moved from Ur to areas where Sunnis predominate.
"There is a lot of fear," said Muhammad Azawi, 20, Mr. Azawi's son, who has moved out of Ur with his family. "Sunni families are leaving. It's not safe."
The Firdos mosque, where Mr. Azawi was killed, is open to the street in the back. It has been repeatedly strafed from passing cars.
"They want to frighten people," said Hassan Falah Hassan, the mosque's 57-year-old caretaker, who showed reporters the bullet holes.
A short distance from Al Firdos, where Mr. Azawi was killed, is a former Baath Party headquarters building. After the ouster of Mr. Hussein, it was taken over by a Shiite mosque, Al Shohada. It is a meeting place for followers of the radical Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army.
Two people who live next to the Shohada mosque said attendance had risen in recent months. They reported seeing men, often armed, enter the building in the early evening and leave before evening prayers. Inside is a court, where defendants are judged according to Islamic law. Cars without license plates are frequently parked in the lot outside.
The mosque has claimed more space in the neighborhood, blocking off the roads immediately around it with barbed wire and blast walls, said one resident whose house is within the blocked area. Men from the mosque enforce Baghdad's 11 p.m. curfew in the area.
"Shiites now have everything, like the sun has the day," said a Shiite man who lives inside the roadblocks near the mosque and who agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be printed, because he is afraid of repercussions from the mosque. "The government now is Shiite. If I want a job somewhere, I'm Shiite. I'm No. 1. It's easy."
Not so for the neighborhood's Sunnis. A Sunni Arab in Ur, who agreed to speak only if he was referred to by his nickname, Abu Diyar, said he moved out of Ur in early June, after his nephew was killed. Men dressed like soldiers took the young man, he said; the body was found in a dump.
More than two dozen bodies have surfaced in the same area, near a Shiite slum, during the past two months. In May, a bulldozer unexpectedly unearthed 14 bodies. Sheik Ani said the victims, who were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs, were those of farmers from a town south of Baghdad who had come to Baghdad to sell vegetables.
Now living in a majority Sunni neighborhood, Abu Diyar said he kept a close-cut beard to try to look more Shiite. He contends that Shiites are doing the killing. "The Shiites feel that for 35 years, they were victims," he said. "Saddam put them down. Now they have power and they are taking revenge. They think the solution is to kill Sunnis."
In contrast to the Shohada mosque, the Sunni mosque, Al Firdos, has seen attendance drop to almost nothing. Mr. Azawi told his wife in early April that there were only eight men at prayers. Gone are classes for children. The door to the women's section is ajar, the inside dusty.
It is not entirely new that Sunnis are being killed in Ur. Three brothers were shot to death outside Al Khulafa mosque in December 2003. But the violence intensified in March, when, as Sunni residents were quick to point out, religious Shiites took control of the government.
On the morning of May 19, Qasim Azawi's wife cooked him fried cheese and helped him choose a tie. He left for work and as he walked past the Firdos mosque, he was shot to death by gunmen in a white Daewoo sedan. The police, mostly Shiites, were slow to follow the car. They never made an arrest.
Suspicions focused on the Mahdi Army. Residents, Shiite and Sunni, circulate accounts that bolster the case against the group.
One Shiite man who said he witnessed the killing said he recognized two attackers as Mahdi members. In another clue, a man believed to be a Baathist was killed, and the getaway car eluded the police by maneuvering through checkpoints around the Shohada mosque, a route that only those familiar with the mosque could know.
A spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, denied that the Mahdi Army had been involved. He said in an interview, "Even if we arrest criminals or terrorists, we always turn them over to the Iraqi police."
Shiites in majority Sunni neighborhoods face similar problems, sometimes because they are assumed to be hostile.
Fatma Rakabi, 34, moved her Shiite family from a heavily Sunni area in Dora last year, after neighbors warned them that they had been marked as members of an informal Shiite militia, the Badr organization. Many Sunnis see it as a symbol of Iranian influence and of their own fall in status.
Ms. Rakabi said they had to hide their religion. On a trip to the hairdresser just before national elections in January, she was drawn into conversation with other women who were praising the insurgents, and hid her intention to vote.
She ultimately registered in another neighborhood, out of sight of Sunni neighbors. Ms. Rakabi said she winced when the women referred to insurgents as holy warriors. "To me," she said, "they were terrorists."
Maryam Mohamed al-Obeidi, a religion teacher who moved out of Ur two months ago, now gives lessons in a mosque in Monsour.
"So many assassinations," she said, with several young girls kneeling in a reading group beside her. "Why are they making problems for us under the cover of religion?"
Qais Mizher, Zaineb Obeid and Layla Isitfan contributed reporting for this article.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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