BAGHDAD -
The simultaneous explosions in Baghdad and Karbala on
Tuesday struck Iraqi Shi'ites at their most sensitive
religious and political moment, when they were asserting
their communal identity more freely and passionately
than perhaps ever in their history.
For the
first nine days of the sacred month of Muharram, Shi'ite
iconography dominated the streets of Baghdad and
southern Iraq, with portraits of 7th century hero
Hussein put up in every corner, and on walls, especially
where once Saddam Hussein's visage had been painted
before the war. Red, black and green flags of mourning
and of Hussein and his brother Abbas competed with each
other over which one could wave from a higher tower.
In the streets of Kadhimiya suburb in Baghdad
and in Karbala, the pilgrimage had already started, as
had the passion plays and flagellation with chains
called zanjeel. Taxi drivers and shop owners
played tapes of the wailing latmiya, or mourning
songs, for Hussein and the battle of Karbala. Iranians
streamed into Iraq, and in Kadhimiya and Karbala Farsi
could be heard as much as Arabic. Karbala residents
began to complain about the flood of Iranians who were
occupying their city, which did not have the
infrastructure to handle so many people at once.
The roads to Karbala were full of pilgrims
walking, some for several days, carrying nothing more
than a flag. They knew that they could expect to receive
free rice, yoghurt, dates, tea and water, as well as a
place to sleep in the many tents local villagers had
erected along the road. In fact, these villagers would
insist that each tent was visited and hospitality fully
enjoyed. Large processions, or mawkibs, sponsored
by a mosque, a school, a town or a wealthy businessman,
sang and beat their chests in a mix of mourning and
celebration as they marched to Karbala in unison.
Tents were festooned with pictures of Hussein,
as well as more contemporary Shi'ite leaders such as
Muqtada Sadr, his father Muhammad Sadiq Sadr and his
relative and father of political Shi'ite Islam in Iraq,
Muhammad Bakr Sadr. Also prominent were the late
Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who was killed in a terror
attack in Najaf last summer, Hakim's brother Abdel Aziz,
as well as his late father the Ayatollah Muhsin
al-Hakim. To a lesser extent, posters of Iraq's leading
cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani were also up, as well
as pictures of Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, a student of
Muhammad Sadiq Sadr based in Iran and the former patron
of Muqtada Sadr. A new face also appeared on many walls
and tents, that of Ayatollah Seyid Mahmud al-Hasani
as-Sarkhi.
Foreign troops were nowhere to be
seen, wisely avoiding provocation that in the past in
Iraq and outside (See Beware of Iraq's whipping boys,
Feb 19) had radicalized Shi'ites. Iraqi security forces
had a heavy presence, however, with many checkpoints
along the way. A few lonely Polish soldiers working with
Iraqi police manned one checkpoint to search vehicles
just before Karbala.
Twenty kilometers from
Karbala in the village of Twairij, many pilgrims began
running to Karbala, some barefoot, in rakadhat
Twairij or the "running of Twairij" tradition. Two
kilometers from the city, the road was closed to traffic
and busloads of Iranian pilgrims unloaded their cargo,
which created a cloud of dust as they trudged into the
city, many of their faces covered by surgical masks, and
their elderly pushed in vegetable carts. Pilgrims passed
a large square with a painting of Muhammad Bakr Sadr and
his relative, as well as intellectual inheritor Muhammad
Sadiq Sadr. A banner signed by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi
National Congress announced that "from the remnants of
Hussein's memory we take the faith to build the path to
freedom and reconstruction". Other banners quoted Iran's
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, "Every day is Ashura and
every place is Karbala," a political message calling for
sacrifice and resistance to unjust government. "America
and Israel are the Yazid of today," another banner said,
comparing oppressive governments to the murderer of
Hussein, just as Khomeini had compared the Shah of Iran
to Yazid. Another poster added that "America and Israel
are the enemies of Hussein because they want to kill
Hussein's revolution". Yet another banner said that
"Hussein's revenge removed Saddam and it will remove the
United States's dreams to control the Islamic world".
People marched in by the hundreds of thousands,
carrying declarations of loyalty and sacrifice to
Hussein, and warnings to the Americans, such as "death
is better than life under tyranny", and another one
addressing President George W Bush and chief
administrator in Iraq L Paul Bremer personally, calling
for Islamic law to be applied in Iraq. Processions from
Baghdad's universities and faculties arrived on Monday
night, the ninth day of Muharram. One banner, clearly
not written by the English department, said that "when
the political solution does not benefit for the
ambitions of the nation the Hussein solution is better",
meaning a fight to the death rather than compromise.
Baghdad's College of Engineering procession
called for an Islamic constitution. Its leader, Ali
Hadi, explained that "most of Iraqis are Muslim and the
marjaia [Shi'ite clergy] should lead us". Other
students joined him and said that if America prevented
an Islamic constitution, "there will be a second battle
of Karbala on this earth", and "the students are the
army of the marjaia, we will give our lives to
them".
Many posters were up of the previously
unknown Ayatollah Seyid Mahmud al-Hasani as-Sarkhi, as
well as papers posted with his verdicts on subjects like
the French ban on headscarves. Sheikh Haidar al-Abedi,
as-Sarkhi's representative in Karbala, had immense
prayer blisters on his forehead from his turba, a
stone placed on the ground and on which the forehead
rests when the devout bow in prayer. "We reject the
occupation and in the future we will resist like the
Palestinians," he said. He explained that the Ayatollah
as-Sarkhi was a former student of Muhammad Sadiq Sadr
and he now had 25,000 to 30,000 followers in Iraq.
As-Sarkhi had declared himself an ayatollah, the highest
level of Shi'ite religious leadership, like a Jedi
knight, in 2001, and had also announced that he was the
wali of the faithful, a position first held in
Iran by Khomeini, who applied the "Walayat al-Faqih", or
rule by jurisprudence, for the first time. As-Sarkhi
believed he was the wali for the entire world,
above Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. Al-Abedi explained that his leader had
boycotted Friday sermons and remained at home since the
American occupation. He showed the door and walls at the
entrance to the office. They were riddled with bullets
from an American and Polish attack that he claimed
killed six of his students and guards.
Past the
stand selling numerous books by as-Sarkhi, women were
crying before a makeshift cradle, representing Abdallah,
the infant son of Hussein, whose mother ran out of milk
after Yazid's forces cut off access to fresh water.
Hussein carried Abdallah out to the front lines in his
arms to request water for his child, but one of Yazid's
forces shot an arrow into the baby's neck, killing him.
All roads led to the shrines of Hussein and
Abbas, where a human flood moved in thick currents, with
space made open for women dressed in black and Iranian
women, many of whom were dressed in flowery
abayas (robe). They circled around the shrines
and slowly entered one by one. Every few meters
volunteers stood to search pilgrims, though not very
thoroughly. Around every procession volunteers formed a
human chain so that passersby would not interrupt the
marchers. Volunteers made tea for pilgrims, and called
out "chai Abu Ali!" repeatedly, or "tea from Abu
Ali", a gift from Hussein, also called Abu Ali. All
night the processions sang and beat their chests,
practicing latim, or extreme chest beating. Women
crowded into Makan Zainab, a shrine to Hussein's sister,
who cried for her martyred brother.
It seemed
like a Shi'ite Woodstock, to use the only Western
secular parallel available, a peaceful gathering to
celebrate a liberated identity. Ali Yusuf, a hotel owner
who had been exiled by Saddam for 12 years after
participating in the 1991 intifada, or Shi'ite uprising
after the Gulf War, explained that "before we had no
Ashura. They [the Ba'athists] would overturn our pots
when we cooked in the streets and arrest anybody who did
latim". Yusuf was proud of the millions gathered
freely for the first time and the only revenge he sought
was "please take pictures of all this and show them to
Saddam Hussein".
All night long pilgrims marched
noisily into the city. After the morning prayers on the
morning of the 10th of Muharram, the same day the battle
of Karbala was believed to have started, trumpets blared
and drums beat in a military cadence. "Haidar, Haidar,
Haidar," cried out thousands of men dressed in white
gowns, calling out to Hussein's father Ali in his
nickname, Haidar. They waved their swords in the air,
dancing and beating their newly shaved heads, slowly
drawing blood that soaked their white garb and
splattered anyone around them. Men brought their young
sons, some not yet 10, whose heads had been shaved to
make the scalp easier to get to. The boys cringed in
terror as their fathers held their hands on the sword,
called qama, and drew first blood, proudly
congratulating the relieved and bloody child afterwards.
Some men, their white gowns soaked heavily with shiny
red blood, collapsed and were taken to emergency medical
treatment centers waiting for them. Others, when
finished, stood around smoking and smiling.
It
was then, at the bloodiest moment in Karbala, that the
bombs exploded, slaughtering close to 200 and maiming
hundreds of others. The attacks were meant to arouse
Shi'ite anger and set off a civil war between Sunnis and
Shi'ites, but they have had the opposite effect. Sunni
leaders reached out to their Shi'ite brethren
immediately. Even before the attacks, early on Tuesday
morning, the Sunnis of Aadhamiya's Abu Hanifa mosque
provided water and rest stops to the Shi'ite pilgrims
marching to Kadhim in Baghdad. After the attacks, even
radical Sunni leaders like Dr Ahmad al-Kubaisi condemned
them and called for brotherhood.
Remarkably, in
Fallujah, a center of Sunni radicalism and resistance,
mosque leaders used loudspeakers to exhort their
citizens to donate blood to Shi'ite victims of the
bombings. Hundreds of youths responded and they were
driven to blood collection centers. In Baghdad, Sunnis
and Shi'ites were united in blaming the Americans for
the attacks, accusing them of seeking to divide Iraq.
Unlike Pakistan, where Tuesday's massacre of 41 Shi'ites
was just part of a pattern in Shi'ite and Sunni communal
slaughter and hatred, in Iraq there has never been a
history of sectarianism. In fact, the leaders of the two
religious communities often cooperated against tyrants,
and immediately after the war, radical leaders from both
sides called for national unity.
If the intent
of the devastating attacks was to divide the nation, it
seems they have had the opposite effect, uniting Iraq's
Muslims, though possibly uniting them against the
American occupation.
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