BAGHDAD
- The streets in Baghdad are mean at night. Only wild
dogs prowl. Iraqis and journalists are prudent to stay
inside. At 11pm I received a call from a friend in the
Saha neighborhood of Baghdad's Shaab district,
a Shi'ite stronghold. A Sunni mosque near his house had
been attacked.
"They are Wahhabis," he said
(Iraqi Shi'ites call all conservative Sunnis Wahhabis).
"Did I want to come?" I couldn't resist, and asked the
hotel for their taxi driver, but I didn't explain why I
was going there. Not a single car was out as we drove
for 20 minutes from the city center to the Qiba mosque.
The streets of Shaab were misty and unlit. The road
before the mosque was blocked by a truck.
As we
drew up, about 20 men holding Kalashnikovs surrounded
the taxi, and on each side young men in shabby civilian
clothes pointed the barrels of their guns into the car
through the rolled down windows. They demanded to know
who we were and what we wanted. They were very tense. I
asked the one on my side who he was, but he ordered me
out of the car. The taxi driver explained that I was not
an Iraqi. "He's a foreigner!" they shouted to each
other, and all the men came closer to the car. "They are
all Israelis and Jews," shouted one man in a slurred
voice.
We tried to explain that I was a
journalist, but they had never seen an American passport
or a press ID before. Why was I here? What did I want?
It was clear from the fear in their eyes and the anger
in their voices as they barked orders that they wanted
to find somebody to kill. They used none of the polite
expressions that typically color even hostile Arabic
conversation. They only gave orders, as if we were their
prisoners, their voices echoing against the empty city's
buildings.
The man with the slurred voice
pointed his Kalashnikov directly at me, clearly in a
drunken rage. The driver and I protested again that I
was just a journalist, in the country to investigate an
attack. Not knowing if they were Sunni or Shi'ite, I
recited the names of every Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite
leader that I could think of and said that they were all
my friends. I won over two men, and they began
struggling with the drunk man, who was still seemingly
intent on shooting me. He would not move the gun's
barrel from right in front of me. My chest was a vacuum.
Then I managed to move away from the swaying danger. The
undecided ones in the group nervously eyed me, but
before they could make up their minds one way or another
one of the sympathetic ones hustled me into the mosque.
There were a number of armed guards in the
mosque. I tried to remember how to speak Arabic, and
felt ashamed that my knees were very weak. The guards
confirmed that after the last prayers at night, as the
devout were emptying onto the street, a car drove by and
opened fire. "Praise God, nobody was wounded," they
said, pointing to the white gashes in the wall where
bullets had torn off chunks of plaster. They added that
only a few months ago the same thing had happened. As
more men gathered holding their Kalashnikovs in a
ready-firing position (a rarity for Iraqis who usually
sling their weapons lazily), I decided that I had seen
enough.
In the morning, Shaab's streets were
busy with children playing amid garbage and sewage
pools. Donkeys pulled carts carrying gas for stoves and
boys banged on containers to let the neighborhood know
that they were passing. American soldiers manned a
checkpoint, along with fresh Iraqi recruits, searching
suspicious cars. A house near the mosque is riddled with
bullets and burned. It belonged to a Wahhabi Muslim who
was killed last summer by local Shi'ites.
Abu
Hasan, the mosque caretaker, was busy fixing the
generator, his hands and dishdash robe blackened
with grease. He explained that the attackers the night
before opened fire from two cars, an Opel sedan and a
Nissan Pickup, at 7:30 in the evening. They were dressed
like police, he said, and before they managed to fire a
rocket-propelled grenade a bystander grabbed it from
them. "They want to create fitna [strife] between
Sunnis and Shi'ites, but it won't happen. I am 60 years
old, I have never seen any problems between us. We
intermarry and are friends. America is responsible for
this," said Abu Hassan.
He added that Shi'ites
from the city and from nearby Sadr City visited the
mosque to show solidarity. Sheikh Dhia from the local
Shurufi mosque came along with tribal leaders. "We are a
targeted mosque because Sunnis and Shi'ites both come
here and are united," he said. He asserted that 52 Sunni
visitors had been among those killed in the Baghdad
attacks on Tuesday.
In August, the mosque was
first attacked, he said, and three people were wounded.
After the latest attack the police shot a man in the leg
in a case of mistaken identity. The drunk man who was
most intent on shooting me the previous night was Abu
Yasir, famous in the neighborhood for his
alcohol-inspired belligerence.
Seyid Nasr of the
Seyid Haidar Huseiniya (a Shi'ite place of religious
mourning) also visited Qiba on Thursday, with 30 friends
and relatives. As the honorific Seyid title reveals, he
is a descendant of the prophet Mohammed, and thus
especially respected. He is also the oldest and best
known Seyid in Shaab. His large home is down the street
from a wall with posters of Ayatollahs Khomeini and
Khamenei of Iran. The walls of his study are decorated
with posters of Muhamad Bakr al-Hakim, the slain leader
of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
as well as other ayatollahs. Seyid Nasr wore a black
turban and thick glasses. "Our good leaders will prevent
fitna," he said. He explained that when he
visited the Qiba Mosque, he told the gathered people: "I
am Sunni and I am Shi'ite. We are all Muslims." He was
certain that "there will not be any problems between
us", and blamed Jordanian wanted terrorist (by the US)
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the attacks.
Seyid Nasr
explained that the Wahhabi who was killed and whose
house was burned was called Mohammed. On the day of
Muhamad Bakr al-Hakim's death last August, Mohammed went
to a nearby square that had a painting of Iraqi Shi'ite
leaders. "Mohammed spat and threw stones at the
paintings, and then shot at them with his Kalashnikov,"
Seyid Nasr said. "He killed one Shi'ite and wounded
another. After that, the men from the neighborhood shot
him and burned his house. The Americans came to take his
body and found many weapons in his house, as well as
pictures of Osama bin Ladin." Mohammed was from the
Dulaimi tribe, and in order to make peace the Dulaimis
gave monetary compensation to the family of the murdered
Shi'ite. "After this, Sunnis and Shi'ites prayed
together in the Qiba mosque, and tomorrow we will do so
again," said Seyid Nasr, who also mentioned that 51
Sunnis had perished in the Baghdad explosions.
So far, the bloodletting that the attacks were
meant to provoke has not started, and leaders of both
sects have called for unity and patience. Shi'ite
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Iraqi cleric,
urged that Iraqis unite, and blamed the Americans for
failing to secure Iraq's borders. Dr Muhamad Bashar
al-Faydhi, a spokesman for the Council of Sunni Ulema,
blamed "foreigners" for the attacks, describing them as
a "real crime", and adding that "it is impossible for
any Muslim to do such a thing. Iraqis could never do
this". Dr Harith al-Dhari, another member of the Sunni
council, placed responsibility for the attacks in what
he called "Holy Karbala and Holy Kadhimiya" on America.
The chief of the religious administration of the Sunni
Waqf, Ahmad Abdul Ghafur al-Samarai, described the
attacks as "a dirty crime. Islam does not accept it. No
religion allows this."
But Sunni leaders are
taking precautions. Armed guards man the gate to the Abu
Hanifa mosque in Aadhamiya, the most important Sunni
mosque in the country. Sheikh Muayad of Abu Hanifa is
closely escorted by a bodyguard armed with a small
automatic pistol beneath his vest. Sheikh Muayad himself
had visited the Kadhim shrine in Baghdad (scene of the
attacks) on the morning they took place. Abdel Hamid
Rashid al-Ubeidi, an assistant to Sheikh Muayad, said
"only the Tigris river separates us" from "our Muslim
brothers" in Kadhimiya across the bridge. "Our destiny
is one and our enemy is one," he said, describing the
enemy as "the one who wants to divide us and make us
opposed". He blamed "foreigners" for the attacks,
explaining that "sons of the nation would never do this.
If they were Muslim it was only in name". Abdel Hamid
added that "we are expecting an attack at any moment.
And if it is our destiny, then that is God's will."
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Baghdad's Shaab district,
a Shi'ite stronghold. A Sunni mosque near his house had
been attacked. 
