NEWS: U.S. Crackdown on Shi'ites Fuels Iraqi Anger
Sat Oct 18,12:57 PM ET
story.news.yahoo.com
By Michael Georgy
KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops sealed off roads around the house of an Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim cleric on Saturday and another sheikh warned the crackdown on radicals would only backfire.
Soldiers surrounded the buildings used by local cleric Sayyid Mahmoud al-Hassani with armored vehicles and helicopters circled overhead.
Three U.S. military police and two Iraqi police were killed on Thursday night in fighting in the city which U.S. forces blamed on supporters of Hassani, himself a sympathizer of radical Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr who opposes the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq (news - web sites).
U.S. officers would not comment on whether they were hoping to arrest Hassani. His supporters said he had left his home after Thursday's shootout in which local people said eight of his followers had been killed.
After arresting one of his followers, American soldiers surrounded Hassani's office building, witnesses said.
The moves suggested American troops are taking a harder line against radical clerics backed by militiamen armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades who are fiercely opposed to the occupation.
Sheikh Kathim al-Nasseri, Sadr's representative in Kerbala, said U.S. troops made a serious mistake spilling Muslim blood and pressuring Shi'ite clerics.
"The result will be very bad for the Americans. If they increase the pressure there will be a crisis between the people of Kerbala and the Americans," he told Reuters.
He warned occupation forces that if they do any harm to Shi'ite shrines in the holy cities of Kerbala or Najaf "they will face not only Shi'ites in Iraq but Shi'ites all over the world."
Shi'ites are in the majority in Iraq and were repressed by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), a Sunni. Moderate Shi'ite leaders have advocated cautious cooperation with Iraq's occupying forces in the hope of securing power in a future government.
Most attacks on U.S. forces have occurred in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad, but Thursday's attack in the Shi'ite city 90 kms (55 miles) south of the capital showed increasing anti-American sentiment among the young followers of radical Shi'ite clerics.
Among the American dead in Kerbala was a lieutenant-colonel, one of the most high-ranking soldiers to be killed by guerrillas in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April.
"(Hassani) is very popular in Kerbala," said teenager Raed Kerba'i, in a crowd gathered around the U.S. roadblocks. "The Americans just want to take over and we won't let them."
Officials in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) ruling Iraq believe Hassani has 60 to 100 followers in Kerbala.
"He is a mixture of a criminal and a lunatic who believes he has a hotline to God... He had set up checkpoints in Kerbala to fleece money out of people. At one point his guys went to the governorate building with machetes and two were shot," a CPA official said.
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel George Krivo said there was no evidence to suggest Sadr, who has a huge following in Iraq, was directly involved in the shootout that killed the American troops.
Blood still stained the Hassani home after Thursday's shootout and angry residents said the killing of his followers and the U.S. crackdown would only fuel anti-American sentiment and play into the hands of radicals. |
