| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-Misc |
| User: |
"zepp" |
| Date: |
28 Aug 2004 08:53:03 AM |
| Object: |
#Peace, but the dead are everywhere |
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1292748,00.html>
It's peace but the dead are everywhere
Luke Harding in Najaf
Saturday August 28, 2004
The Guardian
In an alleyway next to Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, Commander Sayed Haider
rested yesterday.
For more than three weeks he and his fellow fighters from the Mahdi
army had battled against the vast firepower of the US military. Now
was a time to reflect.
"We believe that we are right. This is our country. This is our city.
We will not accept that people come and occupy our land," he said.
Nearby, fighters were lugging the corpse of a dead comrade out from
the shattered ruins of a hotel; others were brewing tea.
Thousands of pilgrims, meanwhile, had begun flowing past the sandbags
and metal barricades which until recently had blocked the path of
American tanks.
"We didn't give in for one reason," Mr Haider explained, as his
platoon posed for photos, still holding their rocket-propelled grenade
launchers. "Our beliefs," he said.
In the end, the battle for Najaf that had plunged Iraq's interim
government into crisis ended, to everyone's surprise and relief,
peacefully yesterday.
On Thursday evening Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most
important Shia leader, and Mr Haider's boss Moqtada al-Sadr, had
agreed a deal under which Mr Sadr's Shia militia would vacate the Imam
Ali shrine and go home. To some surprise, they did.
Initially not everyone was on message: as the pilgrims filed through
into a narrow alleyway of bullet-ridden camera shops and colonnades, a
sniper started firing. But by mid-morning, the mood had turned jolly.
"I've been here for five months. I've only seen my wife once a month
during that time. I'm going back to Baghdad as soon as I've finished
my breakfast," Abu al-Musawi said, waving a victory kebab. "It's
peace," he added. Inside the shrine, dozens of Sadr supporters were
dancing in a circle, waving placards of their leader; outside in the
street a man was pushing a cart, carrying a mortar ineptly hidden
under a blanket.
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Asked whether he had now handed in his Kalashnikov to the Iraqi
authorities, Abu Gaffar, a 25-year-old Mahdi army fighter, looked
baffled. "It's my personal weapon. I can't give it to the police or
the army. I'll keep it in a safe place," he promised.
Until yesterday, the market square leading to the shrine and the
alleys around it had been the centre of vicious fighting between US
marines and the Mahdi. Yesterday, across what was the frontline, the
full scale of the devastation became clear. Tank rounds littered the
road; the al-Dawha hotel had been blown apart; several of the tombs in
Najaf's old cemetery had been pulverised. The souk was a tangle of
metal debris; on the floor, unnoticed, lay a ripped poster of David
Beckham.
Over in the old city it was the same story. In among the piles of
rubbish lay a dead dog; from the seemingly empty houses came the smell
of rotting flesh.
But what had it all meant?
Yesterday Abu Hussein Muhammad, a Najaf local, said he did not support
Mr Sadr and was sceptical that peace would now descend on Iraq.
"We support Bush and the coalition forces. They allowed us to get rid
of this monster," he said.
Mr Hussein said that the Mahdi army had slit the throat of one of his
neighbours, a police officer. "These people are savages," he said.
There was stark evidence for his claim: in a building that served as
Mr Sadr's Sharia court, just behind the shrine, police stumbled upon
some of his army's apparent victims.
The Guardian counted 20 corpses - stinking, blackened and disfigured,
on the floor beneath a judicial clock. It appeared they had been
tortured. Given the state of the bodies, nobody could be sure. But
other survivors were unequivocal in their praise for Mr Sadr. "Moqtada
is the son of Iraq," Abu Ahmed, 28, said on his way to the shrine, his
two-year-old son Ahmed perched on his shoulders clutching a
multicoloured plastic Kalashnikov.
What kind of future did he envisage for Ahmed? "He'll join the Mahdi
army," Mr Ahmed said. "I'll teach him to fight Americans."
By late morning the human shields who had spent days sleeping inside
the Imam Ali shrine had left. The cleaners had arrived and were
rolling up the carpets. A few golden tiles had fallen off one of the
minarets, but otherwise the building appeared remarkably undamaged.
In an air-conditioned audience room, Mr Sadr's spokesman Sheikh Ahmed
Shaibani explained the five-point peace plan signed by Mr Sadr and Mr
Sistani.
Under the agreement the Mahdi army would leave Najaf and Kufa; the
Iraqi police would take over security in both towns; and the Iraqi
government would compensate those whose property was destroyed in the
fighting.
The Americans would also pull out of both cities - something that
yesterday had not happened.
Asked what the uprising had achieved, Mr Shaibani said it had proved
that the al-Marjia'ya - the committee of Shia scholars headed by Mr
Sistani - was the ultimate authority in Iraq.
He added: "The Mahdi army will never be disarmed. We have proved it is
a religious army."
Tantalisingly, Mr Shaibani hinted that Mr Sadr might take up a post in
Iraq's next government - provided next year's elections were "honest"
and the Americans did not try to manipulate them.
The political parties would also create a "suitable environment" for a
proper census to be carried out to facilitate elections and the
"return of full sovereignty" to Iraq, he announced.
By late afternoon Iraqi troops were patrolling the old city for the
first time; American soldiers were loafing some distance away on a
traffic roundabout. Three tanks were sitting in a dusty car park.
Earlier, before going home, the Mahdi army fighters had been
recounting their tales of martyrdom.
"In the last couple of hours before the ceasefire one of my friends
died while he was firing his Kalashnikov at a helicopter," Jawad Abdul
Khadi, 24, said. "Fortunately our brothers shot it down over the
cemetery."
Mr Khadi claimed that during the entire battle only 61 of his
"brothers" were killed - with only "one or two fighters" dying each
day.
And what would happen now he was asked?
"There are still a lot of us left," he said.
--
"There are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves
in Iraq"
--George Bush, May 1st, 2003
Said during "Mission Accomplished" speech on USS Lincoln
A year later, Mr. Bush observed with no irony to Al Arabiya TV:
"Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and
trying to destabilize their country, and we will help them rid
Iraq of these killers."
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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"And I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton’s willingness to go into a state she doesn’t even live in and pretend to represent people there. So I certainly wouldn’t imitate it.”
Alan Keyes (R-Hypocrite) on Fox News, "Special Report with Brit Hume," March 17, 2000
"Pre-emptive war was invented by Adolf Hitler. To be perfectly honest,
I wouldn't take anyone who came up with such a thing seriously".
Dwight Eisenhower (legitimately elected President), 1953
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Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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