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Terrorists
Aiming To Spark A Religious War
The
murder of a leading Iraqi cleric by a horrific
car bomb on Friday was more than a tragic blow
to Iraqis.
It was a deadly
challenge to the whole Iraq policy of the United
States.
There was a
ghoulish strategy apparent behind the bomb that
killed Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim and
dozens of worshipers outside Shiite Islam's
holiest shrine in Najaf. For that reason, this
outrage generated even more fear than last
week's attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.
The bombers want
to show that the United States can't restore
stability to the country. They want to prove
that mighty America can't prevent the murder of
any Iraqi. They clearly hope to turn Iraq's
Shiite majority — which has tolerated U.S.
occupation — against the Americans.
And they want to
sow fear that, if the occupation continues, Iraq
will sink into a religious civil war.
The biography of
the murdered man shows that the killers chose a
target guaranteed to shock society.
One of Iraq's
most prominent clerics, from a leading religious
family, Hakim had suffered torture and
imprisonment under the Saddam Hussein regime,
which murdered many of his family members. He
returned from years in Iranian exile in May and
was a moderating influence on Shiite politics.
He had ties both to the Shiite clerical
establishment, and, indirectly, to the U.S.
authorities through his brother, Abdul Aziz, a
member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council.
I interviewed
Hakim twice in Tehran, once after the Persian
Gulf War in May 1991 and again in February. His
position had shifted from 1991, when he endorsed
an Islamic state.
This year he told
me he accepted a government “based on
elections and respecting the particularities of
all Iraqis, including Shia, Sunnis and Kurds.”
We'll never know for sure, but I think he meant
it.
Wrapped in a long
black robe and black turban in his spartan
Tehran office, the cleric said he would accept a
secular Iraq so long as it wasn't “against
Islam.” Once back in Iraq, he seemed more
independent of Iranian influence than U.S.
officials had expected, and bent on reassuring
Iraqis that a tolerant state could emerge after
Hussein's tyranny.
His last sermon,
just before his murder, exhorted fellow Iraqis
to embrace “unity.”
The murder of
such a prominent figure makes Iraqis feel that
no one is safe from assassination — especially
since, last week, another bomb wounded Hakim's
uncle, Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed Hakim, one of
the four leading religious scholars in the
Shiite religious establishment in Iraq.
Shiites are angry
that U.S. forces did not prevent these bombings.
Never mind that the Marines stayed away from the
holy shrines for fear of offending. Hakim's
aides are already bitterly complaining that they
had asked, and were not allowed, to set up a
special force to protect the shrines.
So who plotted
this crime? Every Iraqi I asked here and in
calls to Baghdad gave the same answer: remnants
of Hussein's secret police forces.
No one seems
willing to believe that any Shiite would kill so
famous an ayatollah beside the holy shrine. This
reasoning is even being applied to the thuggish
young radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose
followers murdered the son of another famous
cleric in April — and also threatened Hakim
supporters. For the same reason, Iraqis are so
far discounting any plot by Iranian security
forces, who are also Shiites.
But I was told
repeatedly that Hussein's supporters may be
trying to stir up a religious civil war between
Shiites and Sunnis. I spoke by phone with Muhyi
al-Khateeb, one of the smartest Iraqi analysts I
know, who is secretary general of the Iraqi
Governing Council. He talked as he stood with
hundreds of mourners lined up to convey
condolences to Hakim's brother in the garden of
his Baghdad home.
Khateeb told me
bluntly, “I think now they [the Hussein
remnants] will kill a Sunni cleric and blame it
on Shia shoulders and drag us to a bloody civil
war.” In other words, the assassins may try to
spark a religious war of revenge.
Khateeb echoed
fears of many Iraqis that the plotters received
help from neighboring Arab countries where Sunni
rulers and radical Islamists fear the rising
power of Iraqi Shiites. As an Iraqi-American and
longtime anti-Hussein activist, Khateeb warned
U.S. officials “months ago” of the need to
close the borders to Syria and Saudi Arabia. The
Saudis have a sizable and oft-repressed Shiite
minority living within their Sunni
fundamentalist kingdom, and are known to worry
about the spillover effects if Iraqi Shiites win
power through elections.
So what is to be
done to thwart the strategy of the killers?
The Bush team has
little time to play catch-up. U.S. officials
must do whatever is necessary to close borders,
track the terrorists, and protect leading Iraqis
— and shrines.
Khateeb thinks
U.S. officials should reconstitute elements of
the Iraqi army that they recently abolished en
masse and use them as local police forces. He
said, “Costa Rica demobilized its army [in
1948] but brought 40,000 to 50,000 back and made
them into police.” In a dig at U.S. policy, he
added, “The Costa Ricans prepared ahead. They
didn't demolish a huge army and make them into
enemies without bringing up a new police
force.”
Khateeb says, and
I agree, that the United States must give Iraqis
more authority to run the country and to police
themselves ASAP. Is it too late? I asked. “No,
it is not too late,” he replied. “It is
either now or never, either now or we lose
everything.”
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