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Posted on 04/15/2003 5:23:32 PM PDT by blam
The Shia of Najaf seethe ominously, fearing the yoke of US occupation
By Phil Reeves in Najaf
16 April 2003
The message could not have been clearer if the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani himself had broadcast it from the battery of loudspeakers that hang above the breathtaking blue mosaics lining the walls of his mosque.
The powerful cleric's multitude of followers in Najaf, one of the holiest Shia cities, will not accept an Iraqi government run by anyone they see as a stooge of the occupying Americans.
They are not interested in retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the rumbustious former missile contractor leading the effort to rebuild Iraq, who – 150 miles further down the Euphrates – was chairing the first meeting of selected Iraqi opposition groups. Objecting to the American general's role, the largest Shia party, the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, refused to go.
And they have nothing good to say about Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi businessman, convicted fraudster and favourite of the Pentagon hawks. After decades in exile, he was spirited into Nasiriyah last week by US forces and has since formed his own militia.
Bearded men drawn by the sight of a foreigner who, for once, was without an Iraqi government snoop and who had not swept into Najaf with the US tanks, crowded around yesterday, desperate for these views to be heard.
As we sat in the sun and the swirling dust, their theme was the same, time and again. They were delighted the Americans had got rid of Saddam Hussein, whose thugs had oppressed the Shias, killing clerics and closing mosques, and whose social engineering had left them in profound poverty.
The US and Britain must fulfil their obligations under Geneva Conventions as occupiers, they said. The Allies must establish order, end the looting and provide power, medicine, and food supplies. Then they must leave.
"Iraq has to be run by people from Iraq, people who lived in Iraq and not from the outside," said one of the crowd, Favel Mohammed Roda, a fiery-eyed man in a white robe. "Then Americans must get out." The others shouted agreement.
Iraq's Shia community is seething, consumed by fears about its place in the new Iraq. Being the majority, they talk hopefully of democracy. Yet they are haunted by the suspicion of conspiracies to split their ranks. Some here say these plots are the work of die-hard Saddamists; others suspect the hand of the CIA, suggesting the US is moving to prevent them becoming the most powerful force in the land by sheer numbers.
Such suspicions were thriving yesterday in the narrow lanes of Najaf. A crowd of men, the heads of Shia families, had donned their robes and turbans and travelled in from outlying villages. They gathered outside Ayatollah Sistani's headquarters yards from the golden-domed Iman Ali shrine, brandishing banners proclaiming the unity of Iraq's Shias. They had come to defend the cleric after learning his premises had been surrounded by armed men, who had demanded he leave Iraq in 48 hours.
The cleric was nowhere to be seen, but his son said he was safe. "There is no government and there are a lot of weapons in the hands of dangerous people," he said.Six days ago, one of the ayatollah's close associates, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, was stabbed to death by a mob in the shrine.Mr Khoei was an acquaintance of Tony Blair and Jack Straw, and had returned to Iraq after 12 years in exile in London, bearing the weight of Washington and Whitehall's hopes that he would help lead Iraq's Shias towards a pro-US government, and away from the magnetic pull of neighbouring Iran.
His US links may have cost him his life. "He is so close to the Americans he might as well have driven in on an American tank," Mr Roda said. But he may also have been killed because he went to the shrine with a cleric loathed by Najaf's Shias. They said the cleric had ties to the dictator's killers who murdered another revered ayatollah, Mohammed al-Sadr, in 1998. And in the town of Kut, a strongly anti-American cleric called Said Abbas this week took control of city hall with 30 armed men.
Outside, several hundred Iranians living in Iraq protested against the American-led invasion. They singled out the man they know the Pentagon's hardliners favour. "No to Chalabi!" they shouted.
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It's still the plan.
Won't matter. We have their number. Democracy IS coming to Iraq.
Reeves is an lefty idiot looking for any anti-American angle he can. He slipped up here, though. He forgot to omit the word "Iranians."
What’s going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We’re surely not going to let them take over."Rummy pointed out on Meet the Press the following:
The basic principles that President Bush has properly put forward are these, that the Saddam Hussein regime has to go, that the new Iraqi government, whatever it is, be selected by the Iraqi people, that it not have weapons of mass destruction, that it not threaten its neighbors, that it be a single country and that the people of that country be free to put themselves on some kind of a path towards a representative system that protects the rights of the minorities and the ethnic groups in that country.Of course Shi'a are going to cry foul... the Sharia law that they strive to put into place does *not* adhere to Bush's principles. I say: let 'em seethe... screw them, their sharia garbage and the dhimmitude that accompanies it! The Status of Non-Muslim Minorities Under Islamic Rule
The Lunatic ..Ayatollah Khomenie of the late 70's brought his fundamentilism to Iran...in a short time..his child prodigy "Hizbullah" ..Party of God began to appear in South Lebanon.
Coupled with P.L.O. and other terror orgs propped up by Syria...Israel went "Bull loose in a China shop " on them in 1982...blowing thru them ..eventually encircling Beruit where Yasser Arafat and company finally fled to distant points on the globe.
Irans "Magi" have been in the courts of Damascus Syria since that time..and continue to garden their Holdings in South Lebanon.
Iran can "Turn it up" easily via the Mosque..via the terror orgs..then sit back and reap the return.
Time may however be running out on Tehrans end game..same for Damascus.
They may curtail trouble...allow just enough to keep the food simmering..but not giving Israel cause to Invade Lebanon again.
Unless they are really nuts...my guess is they are banking on time...time which will see more carrier battle groups leave the region..most especially the Med off Lebanon and Syria.
Cagey bunch...they are patient and resourcefull.
If need be...they can wisk most of the terrorists out of Lebanon..satisfy Washington..then bring them back latter...start it up all over again.
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