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| Iraq |
| The history of Samarra |
| 2006-02-23 |
| Samarra has suffered mightily in the Iraq war, but seldom as badly as Wednesday when two bombers dressed as policemen blew apart the glorious golden dome atop one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites – the Askariya shrine. The location of the shrine, one of four main Shiite holy places in Iraq, had always been somewhat awkward because the Tigris River city has a mainly Sunni Muslim population of about a quarter million. Residents had prided themselves on being gracious and tolerant hosts of the tens of thousands of Shiites who once visited the shrine. Things have changed since the start of the Sunni-dominated insurgency in 2003. Sunni militants embittered by the loss of the power they wielded under Saddam Hussein resent the new Shiite dominion in Iraq. Many Sunnis now view the Shiites as American collaborators. Shiite pilgrims nearly stopped going to Samarra altogether. They feared for their lives in the city which can only be reached on roads that cut through the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” where insurgents are most active and attacks on Shiite travelers are common. Samarra had been among the most difficult cities to pacify in the Sunni heartland. In 2004, it fell under the control of extremists, and al-Qaeda flags could be seen flying over some buildings. The militants had been so confident of their hold on Samarra in the fall of that year they hoisted their black banner – in a taunt of American soldiers not far away – atop the city's 170-foot tall spiral minaret at a 9th-century mosque. The minaret, itself, was damaged in a bombing last April. Toward the end of 2004, U.S. troops moved in, flushed out the insurgents and held forward positions inside the city. The Americans brought in Iraqi commandos to help them patrol the city while they worked to build a local police force. Since then, Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, has been relatively quiet but far from entirely peaceful. There have been car bombs, assassinations or gunfights but none of the wholesale violence that once ranked Samarra with Fallujah, west of Baghdad, as a “no-go” insurgency stronghold for the U.S. military. Suspicion for Wednesday's attack quickly fell on militant Sunnis, most probably from al-Qaeda. The target conforms with the terror group's publicized aim of igniting a Shiite-Sunni war in Iraq. Some Samarra residents have complained of abuse and mistreatment by paramilitary commandos based in the city, who are primarily Shiite and come from areas outside of this Sunni Arab dominated province. A new battalion of commandos was sent to the city in December, and U.S. commanders said that had doubled the number of the Iraqi forces in Samarra to about 900. The number of U.S. soldiers based within the city was simultaneously trimmed by about two-thirds, to some 200. U.S. commanders in Diyala province, the religiously mixed area east of Samarra, said several Shiite mosques were destroyed in the mostly agrarian area outside the city of Baqouba last year. Most had been loaded with explosives and were empty at the time. Tradition says the Askariya shrine, which drew Shiite pilgrims from throughout the Islamic world, is near the place where the last of the 12 Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi, known as the “hidden imam,” was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine. Shiites believe he is still alive and will return to restore justice to humanity. An attack at such an important religious shrine would constitute a grave assault on Shiite Islam at a time of rising sectarian tensions in Iraq. The shrine contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi who died in 868 A.D. and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874 A.D and was the father of the hidden imam. The golden dome was completed in 1905. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Completed in 1905? Then that really is rebar sticking out of concrete, not so old as they made us to believe. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2006-02-23 20:34 |