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Sunnis wait for their
moment
By Nir Rosen
BAGHDAD -
The bombing of the United Nations compound last week
means that now the targets in Iraq are not merely
occupying forces, but the West and the international
system as a whole. The 
use of an
explosive-laden truck and a suicidal driver resemble the
tactics of al-Qaeda, Hamas and even the Lebanese
Hizbollah in the 1980s.
In a speech last Friday,
President George W Bush warned of "al-Qaeda-type
fighters" infiltrating Iraq. It is unlikely that
Shi'ites would have been involved in the attack since
their community has generally refrained from attacking
US and British soldiers, while their leaders have
criticized the style more than the substance of the
occupation. Shi'ites, the primary victims under Saddam
Hussein, are also still inclined to feel grateful for
the liberation. The Shi'ite leadership was vehement and
united in its condemnation of the UN bombing. Shi'ites
are most likely to benefit from the new social order
developing in Iraq, and thus least likely to obstruct
it.
Sunni radicalism, however, is less likely to
distinguish between targets. Iraqi Sunnis were typically
privileged under Saddam although in the minority and
their leaders are far more hostile to the foreign
presence. Al-Qaeda bears grudges against the UN going
back to Afghanistan and the Ansar al-Islam, a radical
Sunni group that was based in Kurdistan, had clear links
with al-Qaeda. Ansar is said to have moved south towards
Baghdad. Until now, however, even Sunni clerics like
Imam Mahdi al-Jumeili of the small Hudheifa mosque of
Baghdad's Shurti neighborhood have refrained from
advocating violence.
"We are sure they came here
to steal the country and protect Israel," Jumeili says
of the Americans. "They plan to take over the whole
world. Everyone wants to control Iraq and take a piece
of our wealth, Japan, Europe, Russia." Jumeili is
conspiratorial in his view of international affairs.
"Judaism and Masonism are at war with Islam and they
share the same goals with America in the world. What is
happening tells us the truth about their intentions. The
American army consists of mercenaries and bastards. The
control of Iraq is an evil thing and those who help
control it are evil. The US helped Saddam 300 times. In
the war with Iran, the US helped Saddam because it
needed him. Now the US wants to play a role in the area
by itself so it got rid of Saddam."
Jumeili
explains that "many simple people ask us why don't we
wage a jihad, but we refuse to grant a jihad so that
there will be no more bloodshed. All the people are mad
and want to fight the US and we tell them the US
promised to leave Iraq and we have to wait, but we think
eventually people will take things into their own
hands."
This barely veiled threat is heard in
Sunni mosques throughout Iraq. Sheikh Kheiri, leader of
Tikrit's main mosque, still called the Saddam Mosque, "I
told you many times not to attack the Americans now," he
lectured his listeners. Instead, he exhorted his flock,
"Wait and prepare yourselves. Your enemy is very strong
and whatever you do you cannot defeat him. When you
organize yourself secretly, and plan secretly and
collect weapons secretly, then you will succeed in
whatever you do. Don't let your enemy know what you are
doing. Your government is gone, your supporters are
gone, everything is gone right now."
Sheikh
Kheiri admonished his listeners, who numbered about 500,
for supporting the Ba'ath Party of Saddam and for
straying from Islam. Before the war, criticism of the
secular and corrupt Ba'ath Party would have led to
death, but now he blamed their support of the Ba'athists
for the American presence. Kheiri reminded his listeners
that "Mohammed worked secretly for three years before he
began his campaign for Islam". He urged them to organize
and recruit people, warning against small random attacks
because "you are between the lion's teeth and if you do
anything he will kill you and your family. Don't do
anything until we tell you."
Tikrit is the
center of the area in Iraq known as the "Sunni
Triangle", which was referred to by the head of the US
Central Command, General John Abizaid, recently. "The
terrorist threat that is emerging and is certainly
becoming a problem for us is clearly being fueled by
extremists within a fairly distinct geographical area -
Tikrit, Ar Ramadi, Baghdad."
In Samara, a city
located between Tikrit and Baghdad, Mullah Hatim
Samarai, leader of the Great Mosque, told his
supporters, "I hope God will help us see them leave our
country," Mullah Hatim spoke to a congregation of 1,000
people in his mosque, where he wields tremendous
influence as one of the leading clerics of northern
Iraq. But he, too, urged his listeners not to take
matters into their own hands.
In the nearby
al-Jubeiria neighborhood of Samara at the mosque of
Ahmad bin Hamad, the sermon is usually angrier. This
mosque is reputed to be Wahhabi, the same strict brand
of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia and which counts
Osama bin Laden among its adherents. The mosque is known
for its sermons that demand of Muslims not to speak with
Americans, not to help them and to begin fighting them.
Graffiti on the mosque walls supports Ansar al-Islam.
Until recently, there was also a weapons market nearby.
At the Alburahman mosque of Samara, Sheikh Ahmad
al-Abasi has taken a comparatively moderate approach,
advising his listeners to work with the Americans, and
help them, but that "if after a year they do nothing for
the people here, we will tell them to go home".
Presumably he meant violently.
The speech
resembled the recent sermon in Baghdad of Iraq's most
prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Kubaisi, the Sunni
fundamentalist leader of the Iraqi National Movement,
who spoke in Baghdad condemning the attacks against
American soldiers because they were premature and should
not begin until it is seen whether or not the Americans
act on their promise to leave as soon as possible.
Kubaisi admitted that Sunnis were pushed aside
because the US viewed them as hostile and that the
Shi'ites were the temporary victors. In June, Kubaisi
spoke in the Great Mosque of Samara. He prohibited
attacks against the Americans. "We waited 35 years under
Saddam and we should give the Americans a year before we
fight them and tell them to leave," he said.
Kubaisi, who was exiled in 1998, returned to
Iraq after the war and made his debut sermon at the Abu
Hanifa mosque in Baghdad, Iraq's most important Sunni
mosque. The minaret, or tower, of the mosque still bore
the scars of an American missile that went through it
during the war. Hundreds of people stood and knelt
barefoot outside the packed mosque. On top of its walls
stood young men holding banners proclaiming "One Iraq
One People", "We Reject Foreign Control", "Sunnis are
Shi'ites and Shi'ites are Sunnis, We are all One", "All
the Believers are Brothers", and similar proclamations
of national unity.
The sermon that followed the
prayer was unique for its nationalism. Baghdad had been
occupied by the Mongols, the sheikh said, referring to
the sacking of the capital of the Muslim world in 1258.
Now new Mongols were occupying Baghdad and they were
creating divisions between Sunnis and Shi'ites. The
Shi'ites and Sunnis were one, however, and they should
remain united and reject foreign control. They had all
suffered together as one people under Saddam's rule.
Saddam oppressed all Iraqis and then he abandoned them
to suffer.
There were no Sunnis or Shi'ites, all
Iraqis were Muslims and they had defended their country
together from the Americans and British, as a united
people. The sheikh also thanked the Shi'ite people of
Basra for "defending their country against the foreign
invaders". Kubaisi then formed a political party and
limited his overt religious activity.
Sheikh
Muayad, the imam and speaker of the Abu Hanifa mosque,
was chosen by Kubaisi to lead it after the war. He, too,
has strategically chosen to cooperate with the Shi'ite
majority, although Shi'ites grumble that both he and
Kubaisi were denouncing them as apostates until the war
started and that their new-found brotherhood is merely
tactical. In a demonstration called for by Baghdad's
Shi'ite leadership, Muayad told the thousands of
Shi'ites that "we are brothers and we won't be
separated. Our enemies want to separate us but we won't
be divided and we will be united".
In a recent
interview, given in the dark because there was no
electricity that night, Muayad complained about the
American presence. "All good people of the world reject
foreign occupation," he said, "whether they are Muslim
or not. Americans rejected British imperialism, so why
do they deny other people the right to do what they did?
We as Muslims reject any foreign occupation because
Muslims do not recognize slavery to anyone but God."
On the steps outside the Abu Hanifa mosque a
book seller displays a thin book supporting bin Ladin
and defending his actions entitled "Bin Ladin: Our Enemy
is America".
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
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