Another excellent story by John Burns. It appears the fundamentalist Shiite's are gaining strengh in Saddam city.
Much of their concern focused on events in Saddam City, the Shiite stronghold on Baghdad's outskirts, which has been a virtual no-go area for American troops. Many of the looters reaching the city center have come from Saddam City, which community leaders have renamed Al Sadr City, after Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a leading Shiite cleric who was killed in the holy city of Najaf in 1999, in circumstances many Shiites say involved Mr. Hussein's secret police. A cauldron of repressed loathing for the toppled Iraqi ruler, the area appears to have become, in a matter of days, a stronghold of heavily armed Shiite militias. American military units have stayed away from the area, effectively ceding control.
| Can't let that go on. If we do, it's going to bite us in the collective heinie... |
Reporters reaching Saddam City today said the area had been cordoned off by militia checkpoints that appeared to be well organized, many of them under the control of neighborhood mosques. At one mosque, several machine guns were mounted on the roof. Some militias appeared friendly to Westerners, waving and shouting, "Bush good!" But others, the reporters said, appeared hostile, in ways that suggested that they might have been organized by Iraqi opposition groups based in Iran that have espoused a militant form of Islam similar to that which inspired the Iranian revolution in 1979.
| I guess this is what SAIRI did instead of fighting. Hope they realize that to the Marines, one thug with a gun isn't any different from another thug with a gun... |
Some of the men at the checkpoints were described as having headbands bearing the legends of militant Islam, as well as checkered head scarves. Groups like those have been a major worry for American officials planning for a postwar Iraq. Their concern has been that schisms in Iraqi society that were suppressed by Mr. Hussein's dictatorial rule —between the majority Shiites and the minority Sunni, between Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen and other ethnic groups, and between those favoring an Islamic republic and those eager to maintain the secular form of rule favored by Mr. Hussein — could erupt in ways that could leave the United States sitting atop an Iraqi powder keg.
| Not if we kill significant numbers of them early in the game... |
Thus any sign that Islamic militancy is gaining the upper hand in Saddam City, especially so soon after Mr. Hussein's overthrow, would be a major headache for Washington.
| If they don't get the upper hand soon after the overthrow of Saddam, they're not going to get it at all. So whack them now... |
In middle-class districts of Baghdad, many people were not waiting to find out what the events in Saddam City might portend. Using local self-defense committees formed in the hope of warding off looters, some people spent the weekend drawing up petitions to American commanders and to prominent Muslim clerics in Saddam City, warning against the risks to Iraq of allowing Islamic fundamentalist groups free rein in a period when Iraq has no government. One prominent scholar, Wahmid Ladhmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, compared the vacuum in Iraqi politics with the period of uncertainty and direction that followed the collapse of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's rule in Iran in 1979. Dr. Ladhmi said that after watching the American failure to curb the looters, many middle-class Iraqis feared that "the carelessness shown by the invading power," meaning the United States, did not bode well for Washington's ability to manage the complex interplay between Iraqi ethnic, religious and political groups. In this effort, he said, it was crucial that the Americans engage early on with Shiite groups that favor genuine elections and parliamentary institutions, and not allow other groups that have an agenda similar to the one followed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979 to gain the upper hand.
| That's what I said: come down on them with both feet, allow no nonsense, and they'll evaporate. Indulge them now, and we'll be putting up with them for the next 30 years... |
"We would like to see a secular state preserved in Iraq," he said. "We don't think that there is a Khomeini here, because the Shiites are too divided, and we know that a great many Islamists in Iraq accept the idea of democracy and an alternation of competing groups in power through elections. But there are others for whom elections are a one-time thing, a way station on the road to the end of democracy," he said. "The message we want to get through is that no one represents the word of God — or rather, that it is the people, not the clerics, who represent the word of God."
| What an unusual attitude for the Middle East. Definitely keep him around... |
|