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Posted on 04/13/2003 12:18:33 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Armed groups order Shi'ite leader to quit Iraq
By Mehrdad Balali
KUWAIT, April 13 (Reuters) - Armed radical groups have surrounded the house of Iraq's top Shi'ite Muslim cleric in the central city of Najaf, giving him 48 hours to leave the country, aides to the cleric said on Sunday.
"Armed thugs and hooligans have had the house of (Grand) Ayatollah (Ali) Sistani under siege since yesterday. They have told him to either leave Iraq in 48 hours or they would attack," Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abulqasim Dibaji told Reuters.
"Total terror reigns in Najaf. They have told other ayatollahs to leave too," Dibaji said. "This is the biggest catastrophe for Najaf."
Najaf is a holy Shi'ite city in central Iraq where Sistani and many other spiritual leaders live.
Dibaji said the house was surrounded by members of Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani, a splinter group led by Moqtada Sadr, the 22-year-old son of a late spiritual leader in Iraq.
"Moqtada wants to take total control of the holy sites in Iraq," Dibaji said.
Iraq's senior Shi'ite leaders have blamed Moqtada's Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani for orchestrating Thursday's killing of senior cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf's holiest mosque.
Khoei was hacked to death by a mob at the gold-domed Imam Ali Shrine just days after returning from exile in London to help Iraq make the transition to democracy. Another cleric was also killed in that attack.
POWER STRUGGLE
Friends and relatives say Khoei was the victim of a power struggle among Shi'ite groups for control of Najaf, a key centre of Shi'ite pilgrimage and religious learning which contains the tomb of Imam Ali.
The son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, Ali is the Shi'ites' first and most important leader. His tomb is at the mosque in Najaf.
"Khoei was very well connected and resourceful, and from a respectable family. His presence would have tilted the balance of power in Najaf. Many people felt threatened by him," Mohammad Baqir Mohri, a Shi'ite cleric and scholar said on Saturday.
"Moqtada and his group killed him because they want to control Najaf and the holy shrine, which will be the core of the Shi'ite world in free Iraq," Mohri said.
The Iran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has condemned Khoei's murder and said it held "(U.S.-led) forces responsible for the instability and insecurity dominating Iraq," Iran's news agency IRNA said.
SCIRI head Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim urged Iraqis in a statement on Saturday to "refrain from taking revenge against each other," IRNA said.
Khoei, the son of Ayatollah Seyyid Abdulqasim Musawi al-Khoei, who died under arrest in the early 1990s, ran a multinational Muslim charity foundation from London.
He was seen as a rising star in post-Saddam Iraq, but some criticised his close links to the United States.
Moqtada is the son of Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, a Shi'ite Muslim spiritual leader killed along with his two other sons in 1999. Their deaths are widely blamed on the Iraqi secret service.
After the death of his relatives, Moqtada took his fight against Saddam underground, attracting a large following of religious activists from poverty-stricken areas.
His group resurfaced after Saddam's forces were routed from Najaf by U.S.-led forces earlier this month.
Hamzah Hosseini, a Shi'ite activist, said the current chaos was likely to lead to more bloodshed.
"The oppression of the past decades have left a spiritual void in Iraqi holy cities. It has left the people completely disoriented," he said.
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Despite the statement by Ayatollah Al-Hakim's group, condemning the recent violence, it is all in his interests. He wants moderates like Sistani out of the way, before he returns from Iran. The As-Sadrs are the "spiritual advisors" to his group, they will rule together.
We probably need to get them used to the idea of Separation of Church and State very soon. None of these mullahs is very tolerant of the others. The mullahs will be moving in trying to make a grab for power and will try to make Iraq an Islamic state. The Muslims will demand the US get out so they can start their bloodbath on each other.
I thought it was ironic Khoei lived in safe exile for twelve years in London, only to return to Iraq to be "hacked" to death" within a few days.
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